7/10

Dear Kevin Mcdonald : My name is The Film Freak, i am an amateur film critic in Akron, Ohio. I am writing you to thank you for not only congratulatory purposes on your newest film, “Black Sea”, but to thank you for restoring my faith in films released in January. This month is usually a dumping ground for the worst in film. There are many reasons why many people don’t look forward to January, and no one knows that better than me. In the last two weeks, i have encountered seven different films that made me question not only my sanity, but my ability in writing. There are only so many different ways you can explain the same thing wrong with a film. Luckily, your film came along as a dark horse to pick me up out of the gutter. The film’s plot is enough to intrigue anyone who (like me) is a fan of 90’s slow burn action films. Jude Law starring as a recently released submarine captain who puts together a team of misfit british and russian submarine workers to go after a rumored deep sea Nazi ship with forty million in gold bar treasure. From that premise alone, one could think there wouldn’t be much to “Black Sea” to understand, but it’s quite the contrary. Your film uses it’s first hour of the movie quite well to teach us everything it can about every character on this ship in a short amount of time. You feel like you know everything about these men because of subtle dropped hints just below the surface when a lightbulb goes off in one of their heads. The men know not everyone is going to make it out of this thing alive, and the suspense shifts to ten when the team realizes their shares will increase every time a man dies. Law was as usual the strings that tied the film together. His slow transition into a madman whose only focus is putting this gold above his and the lives of his own crew, is quite haunting. For me, it was Ben Mendelsohn’s performance as the loose cannon of the ship that always kept things interesting. Ben is slowly becoming one of my favorite supporting character actors of the last ten years, and i think he made the most of every scene in “Black Sea”. You knew the moments when this man was going to snap because we the audience were already in his head from what we were told at the beginning of the film. He was our wild card, and the madness that follows actually makes sense when you consider this is a thinking man’s villain. What’s great about your film even beyond this is that one would think the arc of the story into the third act would get down to Law Vs Mendelsohn, but it’s not. The movie has a couple different swerves to really keep your audience guessing, and i commend you deeply for it. One such swerve changed the entire landscape of the film, and it’s from that moment on that we must rethink everything that our protagonists gone through. Kevin, i have followed your film path for a long time, but your camera work in this film is among the very best you have ever done. For action films in 2015, it has become a cliche to shoot camera angles up close and in the faces of the characters in each movie. I never really support that style unless it makes sense, and this film shows us why. The ship is claustrophobic and full of a 16 man crew with very little privacy. It’s in these shots that i felt every little bump in the ship, or every little obstacle that stands in the path of this old rickety ship. The lighting is so thick that it almost feels like were gasping for air every time the red comes on. Miles underneath the Black Sea is the darkest parts of the world, and it’s that setting that will remind the audience just how alone these characters are. In the same way that Ridley Scott terrified a nation with space, no one will hear you scream at the bottom of a sea bed. My lone problem in the film comes where so many great scripts have fallen lately; the ending. The final shots and result of the film are fine, but it’s the minutes leading up to the final resolution that left me scratching my head. Up until the final fifteen minutes, characters were dying off slowly to make their deaths feel more meaningful. The problem with this is that it left eight men alive during these final minutes, and it becomes a free for all of goodbyes that feels a little too rushed. The result of the gold was also very unbelievable to me. The movie definitely doesn’t lack guts, but it does lack a little logic in the final scenes, and it’s something that bothered me a little when sent home on that note. Don’t get me wrong, “Black Sea” is a continuing victory road in a prestigious director whose accolades include “The Last King of Scotland”, and “State of Play”. It’s an honest reminder on the perils of greed, and the consequences that follow as a result. I plan on recommending your film to anyone who likes script directors. Those are the directors who put a script first, and let the situations play out from great character actors like Law and Mendelsohn. Thank you Kevin for putting me back on the right track. Bad films come and go, but it’s movies like “Black Sea” that remind me of the very pleasures why this has been a dream of mine since i was a little boy. Thank You