So with Ned Beatty's passing I figured, why not take a look at some of his filmography.
And I decided to go with Grey Lady Down.
Mainly cuz it was easy to find.
Now it's not a Ned Beatty film per say, It's really a Charlton Heston movie. Alongside David Carradine. Sitting around in submersibles trying to figure out a way to keep a bunch of Navy man from being killed several thousand feet beneath the ocean.
It's not bad.
It's one of those; ''come look at our military Tech movies''.
If you're nice to the Army and poetry them in a good light they'll film all kinds of interesting stuff for you.
Want to see giant battleships and rescue vehicles being deployed? Well they can do that.
Want to see men parachute into the ocean?
They can do that too.
And then you throw it all behind some decent big name actors and a decent if not basic storyline and you'll end up with an overall competent film.
With just the right amount of tension to keep you entertained throughout.
A submarine is resurfacing after a active term of duty.
Its most senior officer (played by Charlton Heston) is retiring (or at the very least retiring from submarine command). Transferring power to his second-in-command alongside his crew of 50 Seaman. But unfortunately for them a badly kept Norwegian merchant ship is having radar troubles and isn't aware that this submarine is currently in there navigation plan. Thus they strike the thing and send the submarine hurling to the bottom of the ocean where it luckily catches on the edge of a cliff. It stops itself from falling to the very bottom where it would be completely crushed by the pressures of the ocean.
From this point on the film becomes a big ticking clock movie.
A film of survival in where bad disaster after bad disaster keeps conflicting our crew until there medical supply, electricity and indeed sanity are all at its wit's end.
Peppered throughout is David floating around in this tiny submarine trying to remove debris from the top of the bigger submarine while keeping a visual aid on the boat in its current state.
A fair chunk of the movie is just supplies and men being moved from one location to the next and as new disasters introduce themselves. New supplies and new methods are needed as more time is wasted. As mentioned above it does keep the tension up. Though it does linger on a little too long.
I think you could have cut this movie down by 10 maybe even 15 minutes and you might have had flow together a little better.
Or just focus on some of the internal Shipwrecked characters a bit more.
Dive into their stress as they're trapped inside a pressurized ever deteriorating chamber of despair.
But that's a minor thing. It's a decent little flick and if you're into naval ships you can see a few boats that no longer exist. Like the u s s pigeon.
Oh and Christopher Reeve is here. As a noticeable but extremely relevant background character. You could literally remove him from the film and lose nothing. But I like that he's there all the same. It's funny seeing a bunch of characters who are all going to be in a much bigger film in a couple of years. And the least relevance becoming the most relevant.
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