[Rufus Shinra]

The movie isn't perfect (it ain't called Red October), but still really enjoyable overall IMO, offering a decent story centered on the sonar analyst, the iconic figure of submarine warfare who's too often ignored in movies (with the exception, once again, of Red October, but McTiernan's movie is perfect anyway, so it should go without saying).

The MN (Marine Nationale - French Navy) did contribute a lot to the production, to the point that the actors and the set managers could go inside both classes of submarines showed, the Rubis SSN and Triomphant SSBN and got a dive in the SSN. This allowed the producers to actually build a 1:1 model of the SSN command center for the scenes there (minus stuff that appeared in pictures the MN deleted from the cameras once they left the boat, of course). SSN COs were working alongside the producers, and in several scenes of the movie, numerous extras were... actual French submarine crew members playing their own roles inside their boat.

Not without weaknesses, of course, the helicopter scene being a bit, well, too much (though at least, the dialogue indicates the origin of that PzF 3, which the CO, Grandchamp, says was brought by the special forces and left on-board when they were deployed - which, BTW, is why the crew realizes only too late the RPG has a safety lock). Also a particularly annoying mistake, which has zero excuse, is the ABM intercept attempt, where the video shows... an Exocet AShM being fired from its canister. It wouldn't have cost anything more to put the proper stock video of an Aster 30 SAM being fired from the VLS of the ship (the Aster 30B1NT will have a MRBM intercept capability, which wouldn't be reliable in any way to intercept a SLBM, but it'd be believable that they'd try anyway, nothing to lose at that point). Other mistake that led to snarky comments by French viewers is during the Crimson Tide hommage scene, when each crew enters their boat, the SSN new captain does a US-style salute rather than a French one (which looks like the British, you can see it properly done in other scenes).

In terms of procedures, though, it's a really enjoyable watch, particularly on such details as the crew getting their headcaps, shrapnel glasses and gloves when shifting to battle stations (if you google pictures from the French ships and boats, you'll see that this is SOP there) as well as duct taping the old CRT screens to limit the possibility of broken glass flying around after a near miss.


Favourite quote, for me? "Dans la mort, il n'y a que la victoire qui est belle."//"In death, only victory is beautiful." from ALFOST.


For curious people, the director of the movie (it's his very first movie, BTW) wrote another one a few years ago, which is really good albeit in an entirely different context, called The French Minister. It's an autobiographical movie about his time under the French Foreign Affairs Minister in the 2002-2003 era, when he was a young top-level civil servant under a kinda eccentric Minister (de Villepin could be weird for his underlings IRL apparently), and his job was to write the speeches.

And of course, came the small thing known as the 2003 Iraq War, the movie showing you in a pretty amusing way the lead-up to the war from the French PoV, all the way until de Villepin's famous speech at the UN to oppose the war.