This
isn’t James Cameron’s top of the line submersible. The cranky Swedish researcher’s
craft is held together chewing gum and defiance. It is the last sub a special
ops team would want to commandeer, but desperate times call for desperate
measures. They become even more desperate when disaster strikes in Ben Parker’s
The Chamber (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select cities.
The Chamber has been on the
shelf for a spell after its initial festival run, so as a result, it feels
somewhat dated, in an unlikely way. It is not that we cannot believe the news
reports of North Korea behaving badly, interspersed throughout the opening
credits. On the contrary, we can believe them so well, it is hard to join Parker’s
hand-wringing over the wisdom of the mission and its execution. Three Navy
SEAL-like commandos have been ordered to retrieve a memory card from a drone shot
down over DPRK waters and destroy the drone, so most viewers will agree they darn
well better retrieve the memory card and destroy the drone. End of moral dilemma.
Of
course, Mats doesn’t know that. He is only along because he knows how best to
pilot his temperamental submersible. He is on the strictest need-to-know basis,
so he acts like a churlish five-year-old throughout the entire first act. The team
leader, “Red” Edwards tries to make nice, but Mats prefers to be a pill. He
definitely rubs Parks the wrong way, which is unfortunate, because he is the biggest
of the three—and he will soon go a little nutty from pressure sickness.
It
is painfully obvious Parker does not know anyone in the military from his
depictions of the commandos. First of all, nobody has to explain the bends to
a Navy SEAL, even if he is in the throes of full scale undersea-pressure-induced
psychosis. Nor would an elite group act like teenagers moaning and griping at
each other. None of the men would ever second guess Edwards’ decision to blow
the drone. Frankly, they are prepared for these kinds of extreme eventualities.
If
you want to see a thriller about trapped people dealing with limited oxygen and
burgeoning psychosis, catch up with Ben Ketai’s not bad Beneath. It also features some nice performances from Witchblade’s Eric Etebari and the great
Jeff Fahey. Unfortunately, only Charlotte Salt is convincing as the cool and
collected Edwards. At least Elliot Levey projects a suitably intelligent
presence for the tech guy, but he looks like he would be hard-pressed by basic
training. On the other hand, no military man would carry himself in the manner
of James McArdle’s obnoxious and argumentative Parks. However, nobody is more
insufferable than Johannes Bah Kuhnke as the grating Mats.
Yes,
sometimes the military has to do things that aren’t very nice and sometimes
they even die. That is the price they pay for our freedom and security. They
certainly understand that better than Parker does. He just gets everything
wrong about the military mindset and personality, in ways that directly undermine
the film. Not recommended, The Chamber opens
tomorrow (2/23) in theaters and on iTunes.
