• Directed by “Alan Smithee” (Gregg Champion)
• Written by Howard Chesley
• Starring
  • Stephen Baldwin
  • Gabrielle Anwar
  • Tom Conti
  • Chris Mulkey
• Produced by Silvio Muraglia

Here it is, one of the last few movies from dear director Alan Smithee, who has just recently been “retired” by Hollywood. “Alan Smithee” is the pseudonym directors have traditionally used to replace their own names on films that they think sucked — or, more specifically, films that they feel the producers have monkeyed with so far that it screwed up their “vision.” While Sub Down doesn’t entirely suck, it’s far enough down the bell curve that there could certainly have been some loss of vision between the director’s cut and the final version. Alas, we’ll probably never know. After the credits roll over helicopter footage of arctic ice floes, our story opens at a naval base in Washington state, where the submarine U.S.S. Portland is ready to set sail. (Set ballast? Ready to sink? Whatever it is that submarines do, the Portland is ready to do it.) We’re treated to shots of various seamen leaving family to come aboard; we’re also introduced to Rick (Stephen Baldwin), a slightly raucous liberal civilian, on board to work on Marvin the Mini-sub. (There’s your first clue that the director can’t blame all his woes on the producers: he cast Stephen Baldwin as the lead.) Also along is Harry (British actor Tom Conti) and Laura (Gabrielle Anwar); the three of them are civilians on the first of several planned Navy-civilian joint ventures for peacetime. The mission with Marvin includes charting the polar icecaps with a high-tech “ice profiler” on the mini-sub (Harry’s project) and high-tech whale-watching (Laura’s project).

The commander (Chris Mulkey, one of those “hey, what have I seen him in?” actors) does his best to be amiable with his guests, but it’s obvious that he sees them as a little too far left for him, especially when Rick engages him in a discussion of transplanting military strategy to economics during peacetime.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself; previous to the dinner table discussion, they run across a new Russian sub in their waters that wants to play chicken. The commander refuses to budge, and at the last minute, the Russian sub veers off. At the dinner table, the commander explains it as the necessity to look strong to foreign powers; Rick opines that, since Russia’s short on cash, the U.S. could buy all the Russian subs for a dime on the dollar and hold their own chicken contests intramurally. Although the point, I think, was to make the military look like an old guard past its prime, the effect is actually to make Rick look like an ass — a bleeding-heart, enviro-friendly nineties kid with big ideals who still can’t live without his MTV (he actually says, “I want my MTV,” a little later in the film).

Since you can’t get into the action of the picture too early (or at least so the director/producer seemed to think), we’re treated to the following filler:

• A crewman whose girlfriend gave him a special package (“Don’t open it for two weeks!”) finds the package missing. He storms into the mess hall, to find that his crewmates have hung it up: A huge fabric poster the girlfriend had made of herself in sexy clothes. The crewman takes it with good nature.
• The cook demonstrates his Harlem Globetrotters skills during dinner.
• Laura listens for whales, and explains that they have different regional dialects within a species.
• Two crewmen play Battleship.
• Rick and Laura have showers in adjoining stalls, M*A*S*H-style. Rick offers to wash her back; she demurs.

Anyway, after all of this, it’s time to get into the plot. Rick takes Marvin out away from the main sub on a tether (gotta separate, or the sonar gets buggered up) to start their projects. In the main sub, they note that when Marvin’s sonar “ice profiler” is on, it buggers up their own sonar. When the profiler is shut off, they realize with a start that the Russian sub is back, it’s almost on top of them, and it doesn’t turn in time. (Apparently it thought Marvin was the main sub, and couldn’t see the main sub through Marvin’s interference.) The two subs nick, and the Russian sub explodes (after graciously travelling another few hundred yards).

This is where all hell breaks loose.

Now, let me say here that I know bugger-all about subs. They go up, they go down, they fire torpedoes, and they shouldn’t be painted pink. That’s the sum total of my knowledge.

Screenwriter Howard Chelsey, on the other hand, apparently knows tons about submarines. Far too much, in fact; from here on out, there are so many things happening that are sub-specific that I had trouble following why anything was happening. Apparently someone should tell Chelsey that while research is commendable, not every fact gleaned from that research needs to be featured in the final script.

OK, here’s what I can make out.

The sub starts losing power and going down (thus the title, see), dragging Marvin with it. The reactor also goes down, and the radio stops working. (Phase inducers are also off-line! Helm is not responding! I canna hold her together, captain!) The sub’s pressure tolerance is apparently 1500 yards deep, but the bottom is much lower; various compartments start leaking, crewmen are injured or killed, and finally the sub comes to rest on the bottom at 2215 yards.

Due to a fire in the engine room and a poisonous gas leak, the crew has to abandon the main control room; they crowd into the aft compartment, past the reactor, where their only source of air is bottled.

Meanwhile, Marvin has been dragged to the bottom by the tether, wondering what the hell is going on. When they reach the bottom, Rick taps on the pressure gauge in disbelief. (Hey, dumbass! It’s a digital LCD display — there are no dials to get stuck!) “Good thing I built this for 2500 yards pressure,” he says.

Cautiously, they dock up with the sub and open the hatch. All clear. They start to open the second hatch, and suddenly they smell something like peaches. Says Rick, “I don’t know anything good that smells like peaches except peaches.” They wisely don rebreathers to enter. They find several bodies, and a gas gauge that tells them how poisonous the air is.

They make it to the main control room, where Rick sets up the batteries to recirculate the air until it’s down to breathable levels. The intercom wires to the aft compartment are apparently cut, so they can’t find out if the people back there are alive. Laura hears what sounds like tapping on a pipe, but when she crawls into a conduit to follow it, she falls through a panel and has to be hauled out by Rick. (She never gets back to listening to the pipe, although it’s actually Morse code being tapped out by a crewman in the aft compartment; this is known as the Monster Death Trap Proviso, the definition for which can be found at http://www.jabootu.com/glossary.htm (an invaluable reference tool).)

The three of them decide that Harry should take Marvin up to the surface, look for an opening in the ice, try to send a signal for help, then come back down and maybe ferry people up. Rick sets a microphone up in Marvin that will broadcast in sonar — they’ll be able to hear him on the sub, though they won’t be able to reply (because, remember, the radio is down). Harry leaves, wraps the tether around the turret to snap it, and he’s away.

Now it’s time to stop and have some more personal time. (We’ve actually been doing this with the crew in the back, actually, just to remind the audience that they’re still there.) We have the following cutesy things:

1. Rick apparently quotes Walt Whitman under his breath when he’s nervous — like when the sub’s descending, say, or when they open hatches. (It’s something about the soul travelling, but I’m not interested enough to pull out my Collected Works and look up the reference.)
2. A really stupid scene where Rick reads Laura’s lifeline. We’re not going to die, see? Your lifeline says so!

Then the plot intrudes again. They notice a single light flashing on circuit board, the one labelled “towing array.” As they watch it, they realize it’s blinking in Morse code — it’s a signal from the aft compartment! It signals them to try to signal back in ten minutes (giving the guy on the other line time to hook a lightbulb up).

While they wait the ten minutes (and find a copy of Morse code to use), Harry is in Marvin exploring the ice and speaking aloud the whole time. His air pressure has something wrong with it; he’s not getting enough oxygen, and he’s getting faint. As he comes back down to the sub, he notices some dripping condensation on the inside of the window. Rick starts shouting, “Harry! That’s not condensation!” But of course, Harry has no way to hear him. Harry blearily puts out a finger, wipes the drip, and puts it to his mouth. As his eyes widen with realization — Boom. No more Harry.

In the middle of Rick and Laura’s grief, their ten minute alarm goes off, so they respond on the Morse code line. They then hook phones up to the line at each end so they can talk more quickly (and so that we don’t have to sit through people muttering as they tap, “Look — for — button — on — left”). They find out that the batteries that Rick had attached to run the instruments are the power source for restarting the reactor; they have just enough power left to attempt a restart. The commander sends a couple of men in radiation suits (not, notably, accompanied by other men in chem suits — we’re talking accuracy here!) to see about restarting the reactor, but they find yet another problem: The reactor is leaking coolant (which looks exactly like anti-freeze to me).

Perhaps they can use the power to drive the electrical auxiliary motor! The fellas in back start it up, and Rick and Laura try to drive upward, but the power gives out after a few seconds; it’s just not enough boost to go upwards. To make matters worse, the sub is now tilted to one side, in which position the reactor would never be able to start.

Since the air canisters have given out and the crewmen are now passing around air bottles with masks, the commander makes the decision that someone will have to enter the reactor chamber to fix the coolant leak (even though it would mean certain death, with or without a radiation suit). Meanwhile Rick has to right the sub by pumping the ballast tanks, which means swimming through a water-filled compartment with bodies floating by and opening a valve. (Perhaps this is a good time to tell you that Rick hates water. That’s right, the guy who designed the mini-sub hates being submerged — as he puts it, he’s more evolved away from humanity’s aquatic origins. That’s why he quotes Whitman when the sub first dives. Up to speed now? Good.)

The commander, his executive officer, and a crewman reach the anteroom of the reactor. The commander tells the men to put on radiation suits. The ExO says, “I’d rather not; it’ll just prolong things.” The commander, stone-faced, says, “The suits are to protect you two when I open the door and go in.” He hands his wedding ring to the ExO to get back to his wife, grabs a big wrench, and goes in.

His face growing ashen, the commander twists that and reattaches this and gets the leak fixed. He then comes to the glass, puts his hand against it, and says something about the good of the many… OK, I made that last part up. But he fixes the reactor and expires.

Rick gets the ballast tanks pumped and the ship righted, and Laura starts steering upwards. Rick gets back, takes the helm, and Laura starts watching the sonar, looking for a smooth place in the underside of the ice which signifies a thin layer. They explore, and can’t find any — and then Laura hears whale song. Realizing that those whales would need to stay near and airhole, she directs Rick toward the song, where there’s smooth ice, and Rick bashes the sub up through the ice. Everyone pops the hatches and takes a deep breath, and Rick and Laura kiss (because, you know intense stress makes people infatuated with one another). The end.

The main strength of this movie lies in the almost real-time unfolding of events; from the time the sub is downed until it reaches the surface again is about four hours.

The main weaknesses — well, they are plentiful, mostly revolving around the fact that I (and, I assume, most of the audience), know squat about submarines. That leaves me with a bunch of unanswered questions:

• Why did the reactor go off-line?
• What happened to the radio in the first place?
• Why did the men in the back have to stay there once the poisonous air was cycled out in the front? Or why couldn’t they get some of the good air from the front?
• Why did Rick seem to know all there is to know about Navy submarines? (Sure, he said he reads a lot, but I read a lot too, and I can’t drive any vehicle but my car.)

I suppose, if you’re more of a military buff than I am, you’ll enjoy this more than I did; someone left a comment on the IMDb that this movie was a “10,” so I’ll assume he was the target audience.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 3
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Tony Plana (Exec. Officer Melges) was “Amaros” on the DS9 two-parter “The Maquis”
  • Nikki Cox (the girlfriend in the poster) was “Sarjenka” in the TGN episode “Pen Pals”