The Americans and Brits aboard this nuclear submarine must confront two
enemies. One is a very real and very present danger. The other is fantastical.
The mermaid that enters through a torpedo tube might have strange siren-like
powers, but in the real-world, Russia is absolutely willing and capable of
inflicting catastrophic damage on civilian populations—just look at the carnage
of Mariupol. Give director Jamie Bailey and screenwriter Marcus Raul credit for
calling out Russia by name, instead of making up a fictional nation. (Yet, this
film still has a Russia language poster on imdb.) The crew might yet save the
remnants of the free world, but their intruder represents an immediate pressing
problem in Bailey’s What Lurks Beneath, which releases Friday on VOD.
The
crew are American, but they also carry two British intelligence officers, who
are the only people aboard who know of Russia’s devastating nuclear strike.
Instead of leveling with Captain Banks, the British government orders them to
trick the Americans into launching their payload. This seems like a dubious
course of action, which understandably leads to complications. Unfortunately,
the mermaid-like stowaway excels at exposing and exploiting such deception.
Nobody
understands how she infiltrated the boat, but the naked woman is quite
distracting for some of the sailors. She also seems to have a knack for
literally getting inside men’s heads, through her eerie New Agey song. Again,
the Brits, Brandon and Bradford, seem to understand who and what she is better
than the Americans. At least Brandon feels somewhat guilty about all the secrets
he keeps, since he has fallen for Ensign Nunnas, the medic. Nevertheless, he
still needs those missiles to launch quickly, if he wants to save London from
Putin.
Frankly,
the techno-geopolitical aspects of Raul’s screenplay are a bit smarter than
most genre films, but it is clear nobody associated with the film had any
real-life experience with nuclear submarines. Still, Bailey manages to build
quite a bit of suspense whether they can successfully launch in time.
Ironically,
the mermaid, who expresses centuries old hostility to the male gender, acts as
an unwitting ally to Putin, who has weaponized rape in the Ukraine and supported
a rogues gallery of misogynistic Islamist thugs, such as Ramzan Kadyrov. Nunnas
might have mentioned that fact when facing “Her,” but maybe that is asking for
too much candor and global awareness in a film like this.
It is a shame Lt. Commander Salvatore Todaro did not live to see Italy
switch sides in WWII, because he probably could have worked well with the
Allies. Todaro might be the only Axis officer who is remembered for saving lives
and this is the most notable example. Todaro and his crew truly deliver full
service when they first sink the Kabalo, a Belgian freighter, and then rescue
all 26 survivors in Edoardo De Angelis’s The War Machine (a.k.a. Comandante),
which screens as the opening night selection of this year’s Open Roads: New
Italian Cinema.
As
the film opens, Todaro’s damaged body raises questions whether he can continue
to serve. Frankly, his wife would not mind caring for him for the rest of their
lives, but he just cinches himself up and heads out on another tour aboard the
submarine, the Comandante Cappelli.
Todaro’s
practice of yoga and meditation are obviously quite unusual for an Italian Naval
officer in 1940, but it helps explain his free-thinking humanism. He is also
one of the best skippers in the Italian navy. When his crew detects the
Belgian-flagged Kabalo, Todaro methodically hunts it down. Technically, Belgium
was a neutral country, but the cargo ship was indeed carrying arms to England. How
it managed to even get that far must have been a minor miracle, considering Belgium
was occupied by Germany on May 28, 1940.
Of
course, Todaro’s standing orders were to disregard survivors and get right back
to the hunt. Instead, the Comandante gave all 26 Belgians shelter inside the
Comandante Cappelli, agreeing to ferry them to safe international shipping
lanes, even though that exposed his boat to considerable danger.
Todaro’s
“good fascist” credentials can be debated till the swallows fly home, but the “separate
peace” aspects of the Kabalo story (which largely happened the way De Angelis
and co-screenwriter Sandro Veronesi suggest) ought to resonate with pacifists
and conflict resolution workshop hucksters. It is a heck of a story that challenges
our preconceived notions of mercy, gratitude, and loyalty. De Angelis clearly
wants viewers to ask themselves how they would act were they members of either the
Italian or Belgian crews.
However,
this is definitely not the second coming of Neo-Realism. Frankly, the early
scene of Todaro and his crew singing a sailors’ hymn in unison as the march to
their sub, while the “independent contractors” working the docks wish their clients
well, runs a real risk of glorifying fascism. Still, it is good cinema.
