I don’t care that many critics emptied their colons on Phantom. You can watch it for free on Plex and make your own decision. Personally, it is one of the few submarine movies I’ve watched that really held my interest.
Ed Harris is just incredible at disappearing into a role. Even if he ends up in a B-grade movie it’s always a good watch.
William Fichtner is one of our country’s great actors. He was awesome in Drive Angry and doesn’t disappoint here. Admittedly his role is a bit smaller as this is an ensemble cast.
Jason Beghe is an actor I wish got more work. He’s got that “every guy” quality about him. Not a lot of actors have that. Jimmy Stewart had it in spades.
The man, the myth, the monotone! David Duchovny is how I stumbled onto this movie. When I saw he was in it I took a look at the rest of the cast and immediately put the movie on my list. No, I’m not a Duchovny fan boy, just have a spot in my heart for the X-files back when it was cool. Haven’t seen him in much else. Yes, he’s done a lot, I just haven’t watched it. The three actors above are what pulled me in, he was just a bonus.
Synopsis
One cannot really review Phantom without giving a bit too much away. In somewhat X-Files tradition there are some silent screens with text trying to make this more of a docudrama than a movie. When cutting the movie they took the “inspired by actual events” pretty seriously.
A big part of the hook was that I didn’t know what the mystery mission was because I didn’t know the “actual events” this was based on. They keep that secret until about half way through. Gospel truth the “reveal” early on is a misdirection. The actions of the Russian super secret whatever they were are all based on a simple, believable premise.
The only nuclear war Russian can win is the one it doesn’t participate in.
premise in the movie
Phantom Details
Unlike War Games or its sequel, there is no computer to learn the futility of nuclear war. There are just a bunch of chess playing drunks who decide you can have a nuclear war that Russia wins by starting a nuclear war between China and America. Let them nuke each other until they glow, then pick up the pieces as the only global power left.
The mission is to take an ancient sub that is about to be sold to the Chinese, put a nuke on it, get close to the American forces, and nuke America from a distance too close to defend from.
Disney Ruined This Movie for Many
As kids we all saw something like this, be it on a paperback book cover or in one of the many movies made based on the book. A submarine with great big glass windows. No! A submarine is basically a beer can. It is blind and if it goes too deep it gets crushed like a beer can.
You have all heard of sonar. Many of you will have watched a movie or been to a museum where you hear that “ping.”
That is how it “sees.” A ping goes out and someone listens. Militaries and intelligence agencies have recorded the sonar ping reflection of just about everything so based on the ping response they can tell what ship from which country and where it is.
Thus is the magic and the incredibly believable method of getting close. They developed hardware that can generate the ping response for any ship in the database. Not just the tone and pitch but the subtle changes indicating the actual size of the ship they are trying to be. After the launch they are to change the sonar image to be a known Chinese submarine with nuclear capabilities. If the U.S. Navy sinks the sub they bury the evidence.
Summary
Unlike most WW3 movies I found this one very believable. Today we have AI faking images, voices, and writing. All they were doing was faking a sonar ping response. Given the quality actors, this is well worth a watch.
For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.
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