[Onkel Neal]

‘The Wolf’s Call’: French Submarine Flick Provokes Thought On Undersea Warfare And Nuclear Deterrence

French military thriller The Wolf’s Call (or Le Chant du loup) pulls off a difficult trick: it invites the viewers to think about how complicated systems such as submarines armed with nuclear missiles are supposed to work in a crisis, while making you empathize with characters entangled in that system’s remorseless logic and strict protocols.

...the movie establishes that France is deploying troops in response to a Russian seizure of the Finnish Aland Islands, the de-militarized site of past territorial disputes but not currently a source of tension.


The film’s treatment of ‘going stealth’ may seem exaggerated, but there’s real-world evidence it’s not: in 2009, the French SSBN Triomphant collided underwater with the British nuclear-armed submarine Vanguard, with neither detecting the presence of the other prior to impact.