Crimson Tide (1995)

Gains represent a clear and present danger of national security of the United States. You have no idea.

What bit of welcome back to the clear and present dudes, the podcast where I expect and demand your best. Anything less, you should have joined the Air Force.

Cool. Thank you for joining. I'm Mike Sabah. I'm joined here with my good friend Rory James O'Toole. Hello, currently down in the sonar room for those of you who want watching on videos. I'm letting those green hues that are standard issue for any ICBM submarines solar room apparently. And Sonya Bjergsen joining us from his new digs and his new accommodation over in Hamburg. Yeah. Come on everyone, unfortunately I can't offer any interesting colour use at the moment. I'm afraid we've switched to daylight OPS rooms.

So welcome to episode 10 of Clear and Present Dudes. And we are covering the 1995 movie Crimson Tide. Hence why I've left myself in submarine control room Crimson. Thank yous to all the people who've been listening and rating and commenting and all that good stuff Allows us to keep doing what we're doing. So that's, that's brilliant. Before we tackle the movie this week, Rory O'Toole, I've got to ask you a question. How are you getting on with Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon? Good. Grief. We're close to the end game on it.

The The Road to War phase has drawn to an end, and now what's beginning is a word or a phrase. I don't know if it's one word or if it's hyphenated or if it's two words because it's an audio book. Hyper War. I don't know if I love it, I hate it, but it's but the concept of hyper war is referenced multiple times, which which you never quite got an answer as what the meaning of hyper war is, by the way. But to basically, when last we left off, the Chinese were preparing for their incursion into Russia for a resources grab of the oil and gold newly found in Siberia.

The Russians had joined NATO with like 00 protests from any other members of NATO. President Jack Ryan. Sorry, President Tom Clancy. No, sorry president, President Jack Ryan, right. He's he's like, this is his unilateral wet dream. Russia's in NATO, that's it.

The Chinese invade Russia led by this general. He smokes at least 60 cigarettes a day. And and that's mentioned in the book. Now, I think that Tom Clancy's smoking habit was actually part of the the circumstances around the divorce he was going through because his book is incredibly divorced because President Tom Clancy throughout the entire of the book keeps like bumming the occasional cigarette off his secretary. And then there's like this, this bad guy, he was like Marshall whatever, lit the 60th cigarette of the day.

And it's like Tommy sees like, see, I'm not that heavy a smoker. President Jack Clancy isn't that bad a guy. He's just occasionally bombing them and hiding them from his bitch wife. The Chinese go into Russia. They they have their incursion against like the Russian forces that cross the border into Siberia. And this is when it goes in a real like Tom Clancy just going back into writing about land wars in Granny Ladidia like you did with Red Storm Rising. It's lost like a lot of the weird kind of horny aspects of like the preamble when that Japanese American CIA agent was romancing A Politburo secretary and she kept don't say it.

He's going to say it. You're going to say it. Go on, just say it. Jade sausage, there we go, no more. And in in like the final kind of bit of like diplomacy before the balloon kind of goes up. There's just because, to be honest, the combat's kind of cool, but it's not funny to talk about and the diplomacy aspect of it is. So when you're the president of America, right, and China has a lot of your people living in obviously for business, maybe the visiting family, there's a concern that they're going to be kind of hostages to a hostile state, right?

Ryan just sends the Chinese government a diplomatic note saying he's going to use pave way guided munitions on all of the Chinese government. If any American citizens in India, what once the war kind of begins in earnest as well, There's there's a scene when like President Ryan tries to phone the Chinese premier, right to like to like tell him, hey, man, knock it off, comrade. But this is like, that's like Chinese president, right? He's this guy who was elected because he was hot, like he was a himble like, and he's just like dumb guy who was elected because he's a good looking dude.

And he like does does anything the Politburo say. So someone just tells him, I'll just tell the president that you're not in. And so the president of the United States of America phones what whatever the presidential palace is called in Beijing speaks to switchboard operator. He was like, no, he's not in he's meeting the people. And then he that like the contact the US Embassy in be showing in the like, can you check if the Chinese presidents lights are salon like, yeah, his lights are still on.

His legs are still not bad. It is. It's nuts. That's insane. That reminds me of this week of of Donald Trump getting Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone and getting him to apologise to the the Prime Minister of Qatar for launching those missiles into Qatar. Good grief. It's just like, yeah, that's that is diplomacy that I guess that's diplomacy. I guess you're doing something about it. It's like, listen here man. I want you to say sorry to this guy. Don't. Don't do it again, Benjamin. I'm broadly content with the genocide so far, but please stop that.

This one specific thing, please knock it off. So yeah, I think, I think the next episode we're going to see the final installment of the of this hyper war that's happening so. Hyper War What's that 100 * 100 times Mega war? Type this mega war. It's not quite it's not quite giga war. It's war, but with more clouds of it. Very good, right. We're capitalising on that very good segue of the. From, from from. Clausewitz OK, right guys, today we are talking about Thank you Rory for your summary of a Bear and the Dragon.

We are talking today about Crimson Tide, the 1995 movie directed by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, sets during a period of post Sylvia's turmoil. The film follows AUS nuclear missile submarine SSBN facing a dire's dilemma. Should they launch their new when the critical messages cut off mid transmission? It's a high stake clash of wills which you know experienced and warriors hell Captain Ramsey Gene Hackman and his new thoughtful executive officer Denzel Washington guy.

Should we just plunk on the old trailer as? You no doubt heard my ex OS appendicitis. Your name was at the top of the list. Oh that's good to know Sir. It was shortlist travel in Russia, so they called us and we're going over there and bringing the most lethal killing machine ever devised. The last time we hit this state of emergency was 32 1/2 years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this is what it's all about, gentlemen. It's what we train for. Emerge the ship. Diving officers remerge the ship.

Make a depth 150 feet on. The one MC dive dive. We have a properly formatted emergency action message from National Command authority. What we've always known, BEECA becomes what we've always feared. Telling this to the captain, Russian rebels have threatened to launch against our country and are fueling right now. This is not a drill, no. So we have a possible submerged submarine you. Find out who that is receiving emergency action message. Recommend alert one. The battle for survival begins. That's a message fragment, so we don't know what this message means.

Our target package could have changed. I've made a decision. There's no place for fear. He's lost his nerve. I'd rather go on myself and get this one wrong. There's no room for mistakes. If we launch and we're wrong, what's left of Russia is going to launch at us. I'm captain of this boat. I don't think that's over. There's no time for doubt. Missile systems ready to launch in 6 minutes. You repeat this order, or I'll find somebody who will. Don't know You won't, Sir, and nothing can stop the tide 1.

1000 yards of closing time making. We cannot launch our missiles unless both you and I agree they're fueling our missiles. He's not on. Top of us on the charge of mutiny, block Captain Ramsey's in his State room. Give. Me the missile key, Mr. Hunter. Sir, we are going down. I'm the commander of this ship. Crimson Tide, I've got to help you if you're wrong. If I'm wrong, then we're at. War it's a good trailer. Man, that's such a good trailer, isn't it? That is a good. Trailer how Douglas did the voice over on that trailer.

He's the guy I talked about a few episodes ago. Did like a zillion voices get it for five trailers? Awesome. Some things like trailer like immediately pop out and that we'll talk about. So the external shots of the submarine. I'll talk about that in a bit in the in the trivia. The one thing you heard a lot of if you were listening to this and you didn't see it was was shotguns getting cocked. Yeah. How many shotguns do you need on SSBN? How many? How many firearms in general do you need? It was wild.

Yeah, we meant in like a juicy watch on board submarines when they're alongside and they are armed with the SAAT rifle, as is every quartermaster in the RN when they're holding a watch. But shotguns, the only time you've ever seen shotguns on board ships I'm aware of is when they're on as a private weapon for clay pigeon gene, which is surprisingly common. It's. Pretty best. I was just going to make a dumb joke and say clearly at least one of the the S and SSPN stands for shotgun. Like. Shotgun, submersible, ballistic, Nuclear.

I mean, I wonder if like, I mean, I wonder if like there's an element, if you know, those like just insane stories of like submarine warfare in World War One, like like Dodd Nell's kind of actions and stuff and submarines like, ah, we're going to pull up on some random beach and put a boarding party you show and they're going to destroy a train, that kind of thing. I wonder if like Captain Captain Gene Hackman's prepared for all eventualities, you know, got significant amounts of of shotguns in case they need replace the Olympic skeet shooting team.

I mean, I mean, you know, if if there's no more like society, but the SSBNS all survived due to the fact of the nuclear the world out Marisk America has still got to have like the best skeet shooting team, right. So there you go. That's it. Yeah, I. Suppose the limit is that they're obviously taking the SSBN all the way to Russia, apparently going to the trailer, which is seems a bit Newt when you've got a try to missile cable of covering 6000 miles. But yeah, no, let's just park them outside the front.

Dawn of it. They're going to tilt right down and they were really low trajectory shot. That'll that'll show them. It's coming in under the radar. The ICBM identifies as a Tomahawk for this film. Before we get before we get like super into pointing out all the goose and stuff. I think I think the starting precepts of this movie is is that it was made without the the cooperation of the United States Navy because they quite rightly, I suppose, were pretty concerned about the depiction of submarines this way.

The idea that you could put a submarine to see and have a meet me on board, all that kind of stuff. The movie was made well any assistance from the US Navy apart from like one retired guy who I guess got like didn't get listened to very much because there's a there's a raft of in inaccuracies and so on that one I'm sure we'll we'll pour into as you go through the movie. Released in May 995, Crimson Tide arrived in theatres as a taut post Cold War thriller produced by the powerhouse and alleged cocaine fueled duo Don Simpson and Joey Bruckheimer, who were the guys behind Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Etcetera and also Tony Scott at the helm.

So again, Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Deja Vu, Man on Fire, Enemy of the State. So yeah, awesome. The film's title is a slight nod to the USS Alabama submarine, which it's set because the University of Alabama's football team is called the Crimson Tide. The story unfolds amidst political chaos in Russia. An ultra nationalist threatens to takes control of a nuclear missile facility and threatens to launch nuclear missiles, a little bit like Tom Clancy's Op Centre. And the USS Alabama is sent on a patrol armed with its own nuclear arsenal.

And it then receives A partial ambiguous EAM emergency action message during a hostile encounter with an Akula. The captain wants to launch the missiles. The EXO Denzel Washington doesn't want to launch the missiles. And the adoption dictates that they both must agree. But the captain doesn't like that. So, you know, madness ensues. As I mentioned, directed by Tony Scott, written by Michael Schiffer, who did a little writing on Call of Duty Games and The Peacemaker, which is another movie that deals with the stray ball of a of a nuclear missile and Richard P Henrik, and this is his only real credit.

This guy got some uncredited dialogue punch UPS by Quentin Tarantino, which is really obvious when you when you when you start looking for it. Cinematography was done by a guy called Darius Wolski, who's done a lot of work with Ridley Scott, notably Alien, Covenant, The Martian and Napoleon. He also did that weird fly me to the moon movie that came out this year on Apple TV. Plus I was Chang Taysom and Scully Johansson where they faked the moon landing. But it's a backup plan for in case the Mulan doesn't really work.

The contacts of the movie came out in the mid 90's. The Hollywood were obsessed with the end of the Cold War at this time and trying to find who the new bad guy would be. At this time we had we had the the Russian Chechnya war in 994 which kicked off the air. Prior Bosnia was going on still 990-2995 reception box office got about 157 million worldwide. I think it really would really well got 3 Oscar nominations for editing sound and for visual effects. And I think that's fair enough because it holds up to this day, I think in those regards.

And it's sort of, I would say set the gold standard for, for mutiny at sea dramas in the modern era. And it's still used in in ethics classes in naval colleges to this day. It's a it's a pretty iconic movie, despite the fact that as we're going to go into, it's got a bunch of kind of goofs. Some of them I think fair enough for the purposes of making the movie entertaining and easy to pass for the the lay person. Some of them less so, a bit more ridiculous and you a little bit insulting to people's intelligence.

Yeah. Should we should we get into? Well, there's a lot of intro from me. I'm sorry, shall we get into the plot beats? I will start with the beginning. So the first thing we see is a reporter reporting from the French aircraft carrier FOC. They're talking about how this ultra nationalist has seized this nuclear facility and how the And then it cuts to the chat with Gene Hackman doing the interview for his new EXO. Of the scenes on the fog, I was like, I wonder if this film wasn't endorsed by the US Navy.

But doesn't mean. Yeah, Yeah. So I didn't think too much after that. It's funny. That's a French aircraft carrier, I thought. I wonder if they didn't have the tacit support of the US and if this one, clearly they don't. I've noticed it like thriller media and products in the 90s always have CNN as kind of gold standard news establishment of CNN guy on on the French ship. It's circling back. It's the CNN news team in, in the Baron the dragon who filmed those Chinese cops killing the people Nuncio in that maternity suite and and swinging out was like when, when, when you see the stick that CNN gets from from a certain orange toned guy and and all of the people around him.

It's wild to say that like CNN at one point was like shorthand in storytelling terms. This is believable news, and now it's fake news, obviously. Yeah, is like the gold stand, isn't it? So that the journalist is a guy called Richard Valeriani playing himself. He was a White House correspondent in the 60s and 70s. He got his, he cut his teeth. He spoke 5 languages. He died in 2018. He spoke 5 languages. And he cut his teeth in his career by covering the Bay of Pigs invasion Cuba. So he's a, he's like a real guy.

The the ship for the ship. Spot on nerds is a Clannon soil class as the second of its type. Fess Fok seemed after Ferdinand Fok, who was a highly decorated field March on World War One launched in 1959, sold to the Brazilian Navy in 2025 years after this, and then she was sadly scuttled in 2023. So now she's, you know, a bit of a coral reef for fish off Brazil, sadly, but yeah. We don't have any listeners in Brazil yet and I hear that because I want to get those come to Brazil posts. Yeah. Would it like me to come to Brazil?

Yeah. I want I want I want to get those like come to Brazil and do do a live show posts. I really do. And I was going to kind of get a little bit really about stock footage that they used to like narrate the the like the the whole rise of the ultra nationalists and the start of this war. It's like, oh, we have to drop off JB 233 musicians can frigging Apaches. It's like this video of Russian planes, this video of Heinz out there. It's like, come on, man, spend spend about 5 minutes in the freaking video library and find find something that at least matches with what you're saying.

But that's that's in fact, no, it is it is it is kind of glaring. It is really glaring how, I mean, my back was up at the scenes in The Sum of All Fears when they're doing those precision strengths on a Russian air base and it's clearly AC130 getting hit. But that's like a few seconds of film. And this is like establishing shots and it's giving us the it's giving us the lore of what's going on. It's like, get the get the equipment right, man. I felt instilled, it insulted. The thing is though, like if you if you, you think about this in terms of like 1995, like there weren't as many nerds on the Internet, like, like pouring over this kind of stuff, like Jane's is an incredibly expensive obligation.

So, you know, the people who are who would have known by a glance, You know, I learned most of this from video games, like I, I like in the late 90s. Yeah, I I knew behind The Who come and everything was because I played Jane's Apache Longbow. Counterpoint though, this is all like news footage. This is all like stock footage from the news. This is tough. People would have seen like 4 years previous. The footage of of of Apaches is from Iraq. Yeah, I wonder. Literally the opening beats, the Gulf War, iconic footage of the Apaches, all have a firing and a gun line kind of thing.

People people would have a lot of people would have seen this just a few years prior. So I do think it is kind of lazy storytelling. And I mean, I'm going to sound like a bit of a Dick, but. They'd been a pretty well photographed Chechen war. You could have had footage of Heinz and stuff. Yeah. It was ongoing though. I mean, that's the, I mean, that's the rub, isn't it? Yeah. But at the end they have they have footage that PSP from Chechnya. That's true, yeah. I was going to say they they do manage in the end.

Maybe that's the the 5 minutes more of research they they have by then. Yeah. We'll fix it and pause. We'll fix it and pause.

They did not fix it in person. They did not fix in post. So the next thing we get after that is Captain Ramsey, Gene Hackman. That's the cigar chomping Elder, elder statesman, old and bold, interviewing for his next EXO. He's he's lost an EXO to appendicitis, although it's heavily implied that he drove, drove him away for a clash of personalities. And he's interviewing Lieutenant Commander Hunter, who was Denzel Washington. And also present there is the chief of the boat played by George Desunde.

We get a little bit of an initial kind of view of their different personalities. So, you know, Gene Hackerman's a straight shooter. He doesn't care if what he says offends you. He's not like one of your hoity toity educated Navy boys who's done time in Harvard. He killed the hard way and is a blunt instrument. And he's what the Navy wanted in the 1970s. And is he still? Is he still relevant now? Vice Hunter, who's allergic, educated and obviously thoughtful, but there's also an up and Comer and there's a high flyer, hence why he's in in the runner for this interview.

We also meet Gene Hackman's dog. Let's just get that elephant out out of the room. It's a weird so like they hand wave it by saying that it's just a weird quirk that and it's maybe like a tool to show how influential and how highly regarded as a as an effective operator that Ramsay is that he's allowed to have this weird eccentricity of having a dog on board and allowed is a thing that's mad though, like oh, just makes them seem a bit ridiculous. I mean that in the fish tank it's like what is this was arc?

Ryan Philippe's fish tank? How is Ryan Philippe allows of a fish tank? I understand the captain getting away with having something mental like that, but like right Like it was a fish tank in the middle of the junior eights mess. What's going on? Did you not have a fish tank in your mess? I think that might genuinely be a bit of a like a fuck you to the US Navy for not not like support on the production of the movie, which is like, fine. We're going to show you guys having a second. Your buddies are breed then.

That is an incredibly good call because the Alabama is portrayed as a little bit of a party boat. What do you think about what there's there's, there's like there's a guy with a fish tank. The captain cuts around with this little dog peeing on things. There's there's there's just dudes dancing the soul music in in the in in like the caverns and stuff. But it's like it's like this service a non serious vessel. It's like. Yeah, that's weird as well. Yeah. So I'm not a submarinance, but I am. But I have been on on ships in various noise quiet states.

Seems to me like right. So an SSPN exists for has has 2 has two functions, right. OK, so it's obviously it's a Terran, it's a nuclear deterrent. So so to do that, it has to go to effect missing, you know, like missile release. The other thing that has to do is not to be detected. So the one thing that they're pretty pretty anal about is is maintaining a noise quiet state when they're on patrol. And I get the impression that this captain doesn't, you know, doesn't mess about when it comes to this kind of thing.

And neither should the high flying super duper all over it XO and neither should the old and bold salt looking for the boat who is a sticker for the rules. It just I don't know. So yeah, you're right. It's a bit of a weird party boat. I guess it's been a show like for morale, the contrast, it's happy now. It's not going to be happy later. That's that's that's show everything starting off on a good foot and then turning sour. Whereas if it's super serious to begin with, maybe it maybe you don't get that communicated to you.

But there are moments when it doesn't even get as super serious as a submarine film normally would like, for instance, all the times when the the kind of I'm I'm not sure the modern terminology, but from playing a lot of silent hunter when when the rig for silent runner, there's there's still a significant of quite loud dialogue and people are moving around noisily and stuff. And it's like, you know, it's like, what do you think? Like films like hunt for October on this freaking silence man. And then it's like, hey, guys are partying just a little bit less.

Yeah, yeah. So. It's a chill out room. Yeah, so we'll we'll get into that into your course When when when that kicks off. But yeah, you're right. There is never any point in this movie. The like the the noise quiet, stay elevating even when they're like in direct contact with an Akula class hunter killer. Yeah, crazy. The next thing is a quite short scene where the captain briefs the officers and senior rights in a separate room about what their mission's going to be. Basically to lay it out for us, the audience, what they're going to go off and do.

And then there's a few introductions made. The next thing after that is the crew is amassed a mustard in front of the boat in the absolute pissing rain. Gene Hackman as Captain Ramsey gives a big policy broadcast to the ship's company as well about what's going to happen. And whilst I've got a lot to say about Gene Hackman's leadership style, this this, this opening chat actually isn't that bad. This is actually pretty good. Like he's got a rough away button and he says some things up, maybe are not PC these days.

But in terms of in terms of laying out what's he expects from the crew and what they can expect from him, be pretty clear. Pretty good. Got that message pretty loud and clear. We're going to go do a real job. Step up to your A game. If you don't do your A game, I'm going to kick your ass and get you into shape. Fair enough, I think. But what we also see is that Gene Hackman as Captain Ramsey has got a pretty toxic leadership style and it's filtering down to his offices. So it's one of one of the scenes that Quentin Tarantino's dialogue punch up has given us.

There's a scene in a in a bus, presumably between that briefing space to the boat, whether all the officers are are talking. Some of the enlisted guys are getting on the same bus. Anyway, they are discussing various classic submarine movies and who was in them. So they talk about Run Silent, Run Deep. I think they get some of the trivia deliberately wrong, but they're doing that. And then you meet James Gandolfini's character, right? This is where I'm going with this. And then another sailor comes on board and he's a bit rotund.

How shall we say Jim's Gandolfini essentially bullies him? So he starts like screaming and I'm like, you've got me, Sir. He addressed me as an officer, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said get him that grounded, give me 20, blah, blah, blah and just just gives him a little shit for like no reason. Now we can talk about the realism of of whether you'd get a submariner of that of that build. Bear in mind he has to go to a skid for a kidney hatch. So I was so as I signal, I'm talking too much already, but yeah, you.

So I'll end that point. Basically Jim Scandolfini is like seen one as a bit of a twat and is is is indicated to us early that he's going to be a heel, I think in this movie on the subjects of of toxic leadership. I'm going to do a quick plug for a book that I think is fantastic called Turn the Ship Around by L David Marquette, who was the CEO of he's a, he's a, he's like a leadership speaker now. He does like events and things and Ted talks and what kind of stuff nowadays and writes books. But, and he's prior career as a submariner in the US Navy.

He was the commanding officer of USS Santa Fe as one of his boats, which is a Los Angeles class SSN. Yeah, I don't want to spoil the book too much, but basically what happens is he inherits his boat after the previous CEO's removed. And the boat in question has like the worst rates of reenlistments for its junior rates, worst rate of junior rates or ratings commissioning up to the officer class and all that kind of stuff. And it's just generally performing pretty poorly. He's got a pretty short timeline in order to get it ready for live OPS and it goes through like the changes you made basically creating like a rather than a leader follower culture like a a leader leader culture has waste what he calls it.

He's basically empowering is probably the wrong word because it implies you have power that you get to somebody else. But but you encouraging, I suppose some more positive leadership from from the petty officers and the chief petty officers and all the people who have been told for the naval career that they're in charge of the boat. But I've never had to experience it because on that that particular craft, it was the officers pretty much top down leadership to the point where like the exo had to like approve every single leave request that kind of that kind of nonsense.

Anyway, that's a really good book. Should definitely check it out if you're interested in military leadership, any any form. I found it really useful in my career and yeah, really good anyway. I'm still stuck on on the noise noise state thing because they were going on about like singing and partying and and when we brought that up mentally and compared it to other submarine movies, I just had not that scene from Honda for Red October in my head where the sonar guy goes. I heard singing. I'm just currently picturing like the user status just right next to the Alabama.

What are they? Doing I love. It new Jack swing. You just make it. All the boats, including one way out of Carl.

The scene when James Gandolfini just starts be racing that lad and gets it would do push ups while while making them answer questions about submarine film trivia. It's like Mr Tarantino, I can see your handiwork the. Problem is right. It's like the problem with Quentin Tarantino is you can tell his writing a mile off. Yeah. Because it's always about pop culture and, and shit like that. Yeah. When he, when he, when he's doing his iconic dialogue stuff. And that works OK. If it's like quirky characters that, you know, you don't need to necessarily know about.

Like, if it's like criminals, criminals come in all shapes and sizes in All in all on all forms, right. So you can write whatever you want. You can make a criminal any character you want because all sorts of people are criminals. But like people in the military are kind of like, there's a, there's a, there's a, a language there. There's a vernacular. There's like a, yeah, the way it kind of goes, and I didn't, it didn't ring true to me for them to be that way. Don't be wrong. There's a, there's a huge, like, again, there's a big variation of people in the military as well, but there's like things that just wouldn't happen.

And I just don't think that would have happened without being without that itself becoming an incident, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's so something I recently found out was that apparently there was a bit of a confrontation on, on on the set between Denzel Washington and and Tarantino. Apparently Denzel Washington had a bit of a go at Quentin Tarantino due to like people using the N word in his films. And also apparently I've seen some posts on on Reddit, which isn't obviously the the best place to go for knowledge, but it's a good place to go to kind of see what a lot of people are talking about.

And apparently there's some, there's there's some story that Quentin Tarantino's script punch up added a lot more of the racial stuff as well with with with Gene Hackman's character and the racial tensions. And yeah, apparently Denzel Washington was not happy. And apparently he apparently he demanded Tarantino kind of answer to his, to his crimes. And, you know, say, can we can we, can we talk somewhere quietly? And Denzel Washington, who I imagine was still a little bit of character. I was like, no, I want to talk in front of all the cast of the crew.

Yeah. But yeah, like, it's the match. Like Quentin Tarantino walk on set and he's like, you know, God, submarine wouldn't work if I was in charge. Where's the dancing? Where's the fights over the Silver Surfer? Anybody's feet? That's. What's going on? What's going to say this option doesn't have enough bare feet in it? Exactly. Where's Pam Grier? Where is Pam Grier? Any pretty much any films made by by the presence of Doctor Pam Grier. We have that scene in the wardroom where the officers are all together.

They keep calling it the officers mess in the movie. By the way, it's a wardroom. Even in the US Navy, it's a wardroom. They're having like coffee. They're having a a discussion about and called on close wits and it's another character establishing moment here between, you know, roof and ready blunt instrument Ramsey and oh namby pamby thinky boy hunter Denzel Washington. And they have that classic that classic closures for that every single officer in the in the in the Navy across the world of disgust, which is, you know, war is the extension of politics by other means, that kind of thing.

And they discussed that and Hunter has his kind of stance, which I think is the fracture in their relationship. The first Fisher forming, which is when Hunter says that the the true enemy in nuclear war is war itself. And which tells tells Ramsay that maybe this guy has not got the stones to launch the nukes when he needs to because he was obviously doesn't want to do nuclear war. That doesn't deviate, by the way, from from EU SS actual policy. Nuclear war really like, like it's built on the founding principle of of deterrence.

So you amass nuclear missiles so that you may have to use them one day, but you don't really intend to use them. It's just about the fact they've got so many of them, your town, the world that you know, it would be stupid if you to try and do it. It's the classic mutual mutual issue of destruction stuff. And so I don't know why Gene Hackman gets annoyed about it. But what he does get annoyed about is, and he has that really cool line about it is like when I went to the Naval Academy, it was metallurgy and nuclear engineering and they taught me how to get to the right place, the right time, right rig, fire weapon.

And it seems like they want you to know why. Yeah. And it's like he, he is very much like you said, like he's like a blunt instrument. He he's he's he seems even to we got to be like just nuke and everything and it's and it's a bit wild. It could be argued that maybe he's starting to sundown a little bit. You know, maybe he's, maybe he's getting a bit of the old man shot kicking in. I don't know if it's dementia. He's obviously, he's obviously like a really intelligent guy. You can't be the the commanding officer of a of a SSBN without being actually really intelligent.

Yeah, yeah. You know, he's, he's, he's, you know, he's got like you have the, the mental arithmetic and all that sort of the tactical strategic thought. He's all, he's actually probably selling himself a little bit short actually, because he has, he has to have a lot more about him. Yeah, like he kind of, he kind of acts like a bit of a dumb ass, doesn't he? Take it away, Vaughn kind of thing. And it's like he's, he's kind of like lowering himself a little bit to like look like more of a kind of tough guy.

But you're right. I mean, he's going to be an intelligent dude. And like you said, he's he's studied mythology. He studied like nuclear stuff from that. So he's not a dumbass. Yeah, I think, I think where what's less plausible or if, if we have to imagine a world where someone like him has made it to the commanding officer position of an SSBN, where where trips I think is probably psychologically so. And I and I again, right. This is a difficult thing because I don't know many American SSPN captains.

Okay so this is me just speculating. I do know captains of of Royal Navy nuclear submarines. I've been on courses with some of them before and in my experience, yeah, they they might talk a bit of a talk that Ramsay does, but they're actually all extremely thoughtful people and they're all extremely intelligent and they all ask the questions about why we're doing these things now. I appreciate that this movie is set 30 years ago. So. So there was a bit of a bit of a cultural difference, but I don't think, I don't think it's would have changed that much.

I think, I think if you ask anybody about submarine warfare, they'll tell you that it's a thinking man's game. It's a battle of minds. And you can't be able to instrument because you'd be detected. Basically, if you, if you are stupid enough to think that, all you have to do is, you know, never mind the movement is go straight out. And like Nelson, you'll get yourself, you'll get yourself caught out. It's not that kind of battle. Yeah. World according to Lieutenant Commander Dunbar. Right. So let's just let's just get into it.

They're doing an exercise and it's a really cool thing in the movie to show us how it's meant to go. So the movie obviously does the EM message piece at the receiving of the signal, the checking over the signal by the two guys who receive. They bring the signal up to the XO and the Co. They both check it over, they check the authentication code, they concur and they go for the drill. And it's really cool that the movie shows us that because obviously that's going to be the the blueprint of how it's meant to go.

So that when it invariably doesn't go the way it's meant to go, we know that it's different and that it's aberrant. I like it when movies do shit like that. As that's going off though to make the movie more exciting that there is a galley fire. Pretty mega galley fire It looks like. It looks like it's gas, which can't be right? There's no way they've got gas and an SSBN. Surely we stopped using gas at sea decades and decades ago. Like it should be electric right? I don't understand. Maybe oil? We still use oil for like fat fires, so it could be a grease fire, but the way it's blasting across the frame it looks like it's gas, which is probably more of how they achieve the special effect, right?

Yeah, how much? The so the flames leaking down. For whatever reason the guys fighting the fire can't make it to the galley isolation. So Denzel leaps, gets an Ed Baron quickly leaps through the fire, smashes the button that no else could reach. For some reason.

Denzel can jump, the other guys can't. The buttons for officers only. That's why you see the enlisted can't, can't, can't touch it. They've got to fill in a form. Man, bit of a design flaw that the button is is substantially high enough that people can't reach it while while dressed in basic firefighting rig. That's everything as well. Denzel jumps through that fire in basic firefighting rig. Just like Steve's ruled down in the hood on mental. Anyway that that happens. Captain Ramsey wants to continue on with the drill.

I think this is legitimately demented. OK, so losing the galley like is pretty significant issue. It's a it's a critical compartment because it it obviously governs how you cook and sustain for for you guys, even a minor fire would have resulted in like potentially toxic smoke getting around the boat. They obviously don't hit the galley isolation and fix firefighting system until the fire's pretty significant. They haven't been beaten back yet because Denzel's jumped through it, which is the definition of significance.

So they they've managed to handle it, but they haven't. I didn't see any other and this is probably like a damage control thing in a movie. A really good example of this is actually in that mini series movie of Battle Star Galactica. But for whatever reason in this movie they don't do it. They don't show smoke boundaries. They don't show isolating of the compartments. They don't show like crash shopping and ventilation. They don't show any of that stuff going on. And so there's a potential here that toxic smoke has got around the rest of the boat and there's toxic smoke in that compartment.

The very threat of that should be enough to like drop everything. We're dealing with this. This is a pretty significant issue. So like it's really serious for a for a submarine because in order to vent smoke out, they need to surface or at least get to a depth where they can send something up to effect filtering of of air in. So you have to send a pipe up for that for it to to bring in fresh air. There's a term for that. I forgot what it's called. Yeah. So they've got to do that pretty, which is serious business for them because that's when they're most vulnerable of being detected.

This is the kind of thing that diesel electric submarines still have to do. Conventional submarines still have to do this regular beats just to get intake for the engines and that is like when they are most risky of being detected in marine warfare. Like for an SSBN on a safeguard patrol to have to do this is pretty serious. They probably do have to do it though because they need that compartment back and goal player solution is you know, you'd go alongside duck guard chems would come in do some chemical monitoring and.

Take Fiji, you can get the compartment back real safeguard warfare, battle fighting conditions that you need to get the smoke out and then you kind of just take it on risk a little bit or maybe use briefing operates when you're working in the compartment. Knowing that also that has a an endurance they were using, I think at the bottles. You could do it on a there's also normally on submarines vice this isn't on on surface ships. On submarines. They normally have essentially clogged in a fresh air system that people get on board and it clogs into a central thing so they can travel through the boat maintaining a fresh air throw.

I say fresh air, controlled breathable air from there. Yeah, and you know things about that. Fantastic. Oh, right, yeah, because so my actual opinion about that, so that's just the beginning bit my actual opinion and why it's it's fucking bullshit. Is is later on, Denzel questions this in front of the captain in the country room saying Are you sure you want to do this with like there's a casualty? He's actually like literally a casualty who's who ultimately dies as a result of the fire. And then they have a a conversation about it back in, in in Hackman's cabin.

And I agree with him. I agree with Hackman on the on the one point, which is we need to show a unified face to the troops. Don't undermine me in front of the guys in the middle of the control room. So I understand that. Yeah, I think the way I would handle that would be say, can we have a word outside for just a second and then step somewhere a bit more private and then go. So I think we should cancel this drill right now. We've got a safeguard casualty. He's someone he's not looking good. He's going to die without a safeguard fire.

Here's my reasons for because I recommend my BDR part, my bowel damage, my BDR priority, it would be to maintain USS Alabama as a life sustaining platform. I like it's not, it's not to do this fucking drill, it's to it's to keep everyone alive on the boat because we've actually got a real mission to do. So that ties on my second point, which is Gene Hackman then goes on to say that actually the best time to do an exercise is when there's chaos running. Yeah, it is. But you do that by simulating more stuff in your exercise where so you throw more complexity into the exercise as you go in trained safe to train conditions.

You don't, you don't do it when there's a safeguard incident. And that could literally sink you because that fire could have easily got out of control. It took them so long to get that that fixed firefighting systems operation in the galley could have killed someone if they weren't on air. Like like there's so much stuff that could have got and it did kill someone ultimately. So yeah, right. That's it. That's when did that. So, so, so that is then the bottle lines drawn I think between those two, they now officially do not see eye to eye about how to run the boat.

I think, I think that's, that's the moment where the potential beautiful relationship that could have started Sowers, which sets us up perfectly for what happens next, which is when the launch order, the safeguard launch order comes in. In fact, I I've absolutely witnessed Captain Commanding Officer ignore a safeguard safeguard cord during an exercise. So unfortunately it's not not unlikely. So basically that is how it would go down in Germany.

Well, that CEO only was CEO for little more than half a year. So I don't think that went too well. To be so careful with this kind of stuff, you know, I, I understand the impulse Like we've got a job to do. Can we, can we handle both instance at the same time? Is it's officially low enough, but I just I just don't you don't mess around with people's actual safety. You know it doesn't. It doesn't improve lethality of your of your if your platform if you just stood John and try and do exercise when you've got people safeguard breaking themselves.

Gene Hackman's whole thing. Oh it it was his £300 that killed him, not the fire. Yeah, the fire had the fact though, didn't it mean it wasn't play? Yeah, it was certainly what we'd call a causal factor. Yeah. You know what I mean? So the next big bit I'm going to kick off about is the so the launch order, right? The the actual crux of the movie. So then the inciting Internet of the movie occurs. They receive an EM because this guy is now taking control of the facility. So the EM comes in and it it's the order to missile launch.

What happens almost immediately after that is another message starts to come in. But there, and this is Hollywood, but there one radio that can, that can that can receive the yeah message, the most important thing they'll ever receive, the one point of the one single point of failure they've got for that doesn't work. OK, I'm going to put that to one side because about it the movie doesn't work. And then they have the the the big disagreement. So they've got 1 positive order to to fire. They've got a garbled second message and and Hackman wants to fire the missile.

Denzel Washington, as Hunter says, I do not concur. Not. Concur. And I do not recognise your authority to relieve me under command under Navy regulations. Cobb, arrest this man. I'm getting out of here on the operating procedures governing the release of nuclear weapons. We cannot launch our missiles unless both you and I agree. What are you having for, Sir? This is expressly why your command must be repeated. But then they have this disagreement and then this is where it really kicks off. So we have ultimately Ramsey gets removed from the control room and sent back to his stateroom.

Hunter Armed Guard, British Guard and Hunter the EXO takes command Capital C command of the of the vessel. So this as well. And then course, Hunter then takes the the the decisive action to attack and destroy the Akula leading this excellent kind of cat and mouse chase that they have with us, which I thought was incredibly cool, beautifully shot. But before going to that at stake. Yeah. So I just really like how the film ramps up the tension so much. And just when when this film is on, it is on form, man, it is.

I love it. Probably on form. Yeah. Like a dam. They're arguing and they're yelling over each other. Yeah, that's true. Well done. Yeah, like it's brilliant. What I keep saying, like the reviews of the film on the on letterbox for the for the notes of the piano gallery, it was quite hard to find stuff. It's actually kind of funny because a lot of the reviews of it's very insightful and a lot of them come back again and again. It's an action film where almost everything is dialogue and I think that's brilliant.

Like it's it's a proper dialogue heavy, really, really well written drama. It's fantastic. It's great. It really, really is, and Tony Scott does such a good shot job of shooting it because it's like still a really interesting movie to look at. Yeah, the angles and some of it's a bit wild, like when it has shown rapid movement through the ship and you're showing like all those angles of them going down multiple decks and it's and it's like it's not think just how big is this vessel? You know, it's like it's like, I mean, wisecrack my dad always made about the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was that the USS Seaview was somewhere between the size of AT class submarine and Taiwan, depending on the plot and depending on what the plot required.

And I think I think that's something that you do see in like a lot of a lot of submarine films that can, you know, if the plot demands that it'd be big dance, be tiny. It all works well. A tricky 1, isn't it because SSBNS are massive, but they don't feel massive is the thing. So all the component, because it's, they're still a tremendous economy of space. It's not like, it's not like it's massive because they've got the freedom plate. It's not like this aircraft carrier there, they are cramped on board.

Yeah, because we're like the missile like tubes on like like we're talking about this, the Hood front October, right? How like they've got to say freaking Warhammer 40K cathedral kind of like missile tube layout and like that. That's not accessible while at sea, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah, I've not seen a, I've never seen a, the ladder chain that you have, that central ladder chain, that stairwell, it's actually a stairwell. I've never seen that before. And I don't know if that's accurate to an Alabama class.

SSBNI have been down into a I've got to be really careful what I talk about here. I have been on AV, I have been on AV boot before and down the one single letter chain into that and that is not the same. That is a literal ladder. Yeah. Yeah, cool. So yeah, I love that. That seems brilliant. Let. Me. Just write down British submarines have ladders, yeah? They got me.

This ladder technology gives Britain the edge. Everybody else is still using lengths of rope, just scaling the bulkheads. I've heard that some nations are. Trying to now. I've heard that some nations are trying to evolve humans into spider men so it can just like climb up the bulkheads inside the vessels and have no need for ladders. Yeah. Consider escalators. Until they don't work. Talking and talking about multiple points of failure. That Mitch Hedberg would have been laughing at that, just watching the escalates become stairs before his very eyes.

I. Hope his lace gets caught in a bloodbath ensued. I love this. I love this sequence though. So you have, again, you have that Fisher form. So you have the people who are Captain Ramsey loyalists and people who are happies that Hunter is a voice of reason and a moderating voice because obviously nobody wants to launch a world ending nuclear missiles apart from Ramsey who's super keen to do it for some reason. It's not really, you know what. I think if you were to improve one thing about this movie is that you would give Ramsey the humanising.

There's a bit of it at the end, but I think there's a through line. If you had Ramsey go, of course I don't want to fire nuclear missiles. I know it would end the world. But I do believe it is my duty if ordered to do so and just have it be more spelled out that that he's acting out of duty and pride. Yeah, that's a very. Good. Not pride, but duty rather than him being bullish and really keen to fire them. Yeah, cool. So they get separated and then, yeah, let's talk about the the crisis that begins.

So obviously a lot of internal tension between the officers and crew, but now there's an external battle as the cooler kicks off. Which which final way should have taken them to to Can't fucking read it but the. Noise noise quiet stays ultra noise quiet they. Keep banging on doors and yelling. Yeah, yeah, that's this the one thing that I think Tony Scott was like, you know what, It's a movie, you don't care. But yeah, you're right. They're slamming hatches. They're feeding fish. They're. Yeah, and busting out one of my

and busting out one of my favourite coaches, Cod Soda. Holy shit, Sir. You know I've got one question. So commonly submarines are referred to as boats, right? Yeah, and they've got a chief off the boat, correct? Why does the CEO keep referring it to it as a ship? It pisses me off Unintentional. Made by the film makers. I was, you know, asked the same question. So there's a so there's actually a goof and like there's not some kind of there wasn't some point when that for like I'd like a few months of the night.

He started calling submarines that have ongoing reports as ships. Correct. They're meant to be called boats. So whilst the Royal Navy and again the US Navy, whilst the prefix for those vessels is HMSUSS, as in the United States ship, Manchester ship or his Manchester ship, now they are still referred to as boats. They are, you know, for the many reasons that we call things ships and boats is a boat. I mean also they lose a bit of the gravity if they were called like the USB Alabama. Yeah, RMB not.

Like your shit, you've got to turn it upside down and try and fit it in that way, Yeah. In fairness, His Majesty's boat sounds bravely unfreatening. It's it's just the king in a little rowboat. Just scud about. 2nd in command of a unit that had raw Navy motor boats, RMBS. Get in. But yeah, all right, cool. Yeah. So a cooler class fights kicks off Yeah, really good really, really film making wise I was to take my Navy head off I would say really good Action Cinema like generally it's fast-paced. The music is great Hans Zimmer brilliant music.

The tension is there. A lot of the visual language of it is tricky to do. And they pull it off. So there's two, there's two competing things going on. One, the sonar operator plays a major part of the of the battle, But you can't show a realistic waterfall soon on display to the general public and expect them to interpret what's going on. Nor can you have just the guy screaming at the terminal and then just cut to showing an actual waterfall display because it just wouldn't make any sense and it wouldn't be very thrilling to watch.

And you haven't got the time to like teach the audience how to interpret a waterfall display either. That would be a really boring movie. Not for me, but for other people it would be very boring, you know, So they do that. So they've got to, so they simplify that display. And when I say simplify, they make it into a weird mixy BLOB of a, of a, of a raw radar feed and an ARPA radar feed. So you have like sweep lines, like a radar, bearing in mind that those sweep lines are there because there's something literally spinning basically around.

There's nothing underwater spinning for those sweep lines. And then the other thing is because they need to use the visual language of colour to dictate who the friendly things are and who the enemy thing is and, and what the torpedoes are. This is what the vessel is. And they have this weird thing where the Akula contact comes up as like a red Oval and when it fires torpedoes, little green ovals come out of it. And they also move really, really smoothly, despite the fact the sweep lines again, going around, they're not refreshing with the sweep lines.

They're just transiting across. And now you do get certain feeds that can do stuff like that, like, but that's more it's more like a command system, which is taking that feed as one of the many inputs, putting through data distribution unit and then showing you a screen with something else on. You wouldn't have St blinds necessarily on that unless it was part of a radio image, radar image overlay. So another movie that falls far of this and the legacy of Tony Scott is topping Maverick on the aircraft carrier shows you like a really weird mixie bubble of a radar feed and a command system feed.

Anyway, I'm being boring. So that's one bit. The second bit is is movies always show submarines moving silently through the water at a slow pace because that's how we understand submarines to manoeuvre. It doesn't sit right for us so that submarines would go fast, especially model submarines which are which we're using here using model work. It would look fake, I think, and uncanny to our eyes. However, a lot of combat in this is is predicated on the the use of seduction countermeasures and the way solution countermeasures work.

And in fact the way this battle works. So one the way the solution countermeasures work is that you have to have a lot of separation between yourself and the countermeasure for it to work. So you're trying to Draw Something away from you and towards the countermeasure. So they need to have that that separation of distance, otherwise it wouldn't work. The second thing about that is a big part of the fight is that the boat has to establish minimum range away from the cooler in order to fire its own torpedoes to arm.

So they need to get at least 1000 yards away, which is actually a really small distance. It's like half a mile. They've got to get like 1000 yards away before they fire their own ones. But again, in the exterior shots that we see, everything looks like it's moving really slow. And now this is a weird thing because SSBNS are underwater cathedrals and they've got a lot of horsepower and they've got, you know, nuclear engines and they actually can go pretty quick. So they they could have shown them going a bit faster.

I thought that's my only other sort of Navy wise kind of dissection of that. But otherwise really, really good. Sorry, go on. I was going to say, I saw saw a little smile on Sanya's face when we talked about the the safety ranges of torpedoes. Because you were thinking of a certain Captain Tupolov, weren't you, mate? Hard and fast. You idiot as you killed us.

Rest and feast of a Real 1. Man. I liked how it really kind of shows like a three-dimensional kind of aspect of the submarine warfare as well, especially with, you know, it being like right on top of them at one point and again, the model work is is really cool. Love, like, I mean, this is like, again, you see these things from the mid 90s that are like really heavy on model work and the looks really good and really realistic. And then a couple of years later, people pivoted to CGI and then we'll look back at it and it's like, what the hell is this PS1 cutscene that I'm watching in the cinema right now?

I'm going to do a rare. I'm going to do a rare compliment towards US Marshals here. The the aeroplane crash at the start of US Marshals is all major work and it looks amazing. It's amazing. It's really good. If you if you look at the aeroplane crash in Air Force One, yeah, one of the one of the worst CGI effect shots of all time. I actually can't remember that scene from. We'll cover that eventually, and you'll see it. Diabolical. There's a really good YouTube video of a guy who's done his own version of it using computers now.

Yeah. And you see them side by side, and it's like, yeah, that's what we could have won had we had that kind of rendering power back in 1997. But yeah, I have all ago. Yeah, DL listeners, we've got about 172 films on this list, by the way. So just like, you know, probably not going away anytime soon. Yeah, I think as well when you look at like the visual kind of storytelling of films like this, you've got to look at it and like a kind of continuum with other things and like like other media like Hunter October came out and what and I'm going to keep referring to this not because it's a gold standard of submarine films, even though kind of is one of the top wall as it's up there, it's up there nightly came out.

Correct. In the five years between this film coming out and hood for Altobar coming out five years previously, when you look at other media and stuff you've got like the the kind of upscaling and the technological leaps and video games work with us on here that in hunt for Altobar, a significant amount of the storytelling of like the action sequences like the red root one sequence when when they're just just booing at high speed. A lot of that's tool with stopwatches, right, Because your average kind of like vision of how was suddenly works at the time wasn't as here as a screen with an icon on it and it's moving and stuff.

1995 comes round when Windows 95 has just come out. It's really exciting. Everyone's pumped about the little start button. The Microsoft's blasted its budget on licence and start me up by The Rolling Stones for its adverts. And so you do see more kind of screens that, like you said, are very much fakey, fakey like something from a computer game kind of thing, because that's kind of what's expected at this point, I think. So part of it's to tell little people how it's going on, but they'll have is it's expected work and general in life at that point for other people's come a lot more computerised and stuff.

And so it's it's it's kind of got to really be done like that. And you've you've got your little icon that PRC and submarine type a cooler manufacturer USSR because because that's what you're expecting to see on like things that computer games and stuff. So I think that's kind of an effect of other media and the presentation of these kind of situations. Just my humble thoughts, but you know. That's cool. The display for identifying the track, I don't know. I, I wouldn't say that's particularly accurate, but the concept is the, the, the, the analysis, the computer aided analysis of, of a, of a sonar like sound of a, a track, either Pacific vessel or or submarine and then appointed it to a known track in the library and going like suspect Akula suspect.

So for many, whatever that's that's legit, That's a real thing. Yeah, cool. Man, so during this they do get so they they kill the cooler. The cooler gets one final shot off before it's sunk, however, and that does detonate pretty close to them and does take out some of the boat, doesn't it? Yeah. So during that we have some fire, there's some flooding, we have some struggles to achieve ballast. Yeah, harrowing. So the flooding scene is what was going to go into grim AF. Jesus, yeah. It's really, it's particularly sad because obviously the compartment's filling up.

You've got Steve Zahn down there. Love Steve Zahn and somebody else. I'm not sure who it is. Is it? Is it Ryan Felipe? Don't know. Down there anyway. And they've been tools. Look, we've lost that compartment. I need to see that compartment. A Denzel is Denzel's showing that he is not the namby pamby soft officer that everyone was worried that he was going to be. Because he's willing to do the probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in his military career, which is shut a hatch on somebody in the middle of a damage control effort and and subject them to their fate.

The real tragedy of it is that the only reason that Steve Zahn and the VI don't leave the compartment is because they can't hear over the sound of the water as they're trying to isolate the valve. Really horrible. Really. That's freaking heartbreaking, man. When when they eat because because obviously that like guys like shouting commands for them and they're having like a whole different conversation down because of the sound of the water. And it's that's really, really horrifying. Man, he's fate is sealed when that like the head out of the of the office smashes in the grid and it's horrible visceral and the blood and everything.

Oh my God. Yeah. Really grim. And then there's the score at that point as well, hands in his score where they match. So during the initial dieting of the boat, they, his score kind of gives away to a choir singing Eternal Father Strong to save the the naval hymn. And then it has a reprise during that sequence. And he's like, you know, head trauma, drowning compartment, the compartment getting sealed, you know, for those in peril on the sea. Absolutely chilling, man. Yeah. Absolute needle drop. Yeah, go on Grimm, throughout this whole sequence we've got that one engineer radio operator struck maintainer who's who's main effort is trying to get that EAM thing back online.

Yeah, the Star Trek fan. Star Trek fan? Yeah, that's another bit. Of yeah, I can just imagine Tarantino coming in with his with his black sports jacket at his white shirt with too many buttons open and he just. And there's a line of coke off that little red baseball cap that Gene Hackman's wearing and he's and he's like, we've got to get a tricky at this film, you know, because now captain, that's a captain, you know, And like, it's, it's just what. Did you know that for Fiona Apple, the singer-songwriter?

Yes. She got clean because she spent one night with Quentin Tarantino when he was high on coke and she was like, I'm never doing that again. I'm never excusing myself to cocaine ever again. George Grace. Yeah, and it's absolutely accurate. Man, he's so, so tedious. This guy is like an operating maintain of a radio. I don't think that Denzel Watson used to talk to him like a baby and go like, you're you're going to be Scotty and I'm going to need that bit more power. Like, dude, how about do your fucking job?

I've, I've literally just, I've literally just committed an act of war by killing about 300, like 200 probably Russian sailors. Yeah. Before I end the world, please unfuck this radio now. Yeah, it's absolutely mental. I mean, the Silver Surfer thing, God forgive me, I can. I can kind of guess how. Because it sure stands the what? Because. Because there's a point to it, right In the end, because it shows kind of just in storytelling terms, the Denzel Washington is the kind of guy who's able to meet people on their level.

And he's like anyone who reads comic books knows that one of our Silver Surf has the best. And that's, it's a counterpoint to when Gina Hatton's got his gun against someone's head and he's having a look at this guy's like, like, you know, like, yeah, yeah. And and like, he's, he's having a look at this guy's for the name badge. So it's like that that's, that's the kind of storytelling point counterpoint kind of thing, isn't it? But there's to the, to the, to the, to the Star Trek thing. Hey guys, you know what you love?

I'm going to put my level on you. Yeah, yeah. I, it's a really good point out about the, the silver surf thing because I, I took it to be as a bit of, a bit of a leadership misstep by Denzel Washington there because it shows a little bit of favouritism. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, you, you're a, you're a, you're a, a supervisor. You could be going to Annapolis. You could be an officer. Like, yeah, everyone, everyone knows you're you're my favourite. I just, I just didn't like that because it shows a little bit of favouritism from Denzel Washington, who's meant to be like a down the line.

I I wanted to get your opinion on the whole, you're a supervisor, why are you doing this? Because you couldn't get Commission kind of thing. I wanted your opinion on that. So yeah. OK. So I don't, I don't apportion intrinsically more value to having a commissioned vice remaining an enlisted person. They're two different, they're two very different career tracks. So for me as an officer and having been a rating, a rating to me is a subject matter expert. And they will and I always refer to to to to my, my chiefs for their more advanced knowledge in the, in certain aspects of their job, especially when it comes to like how kit works and the buy the book of application of very specific doctrine for how you do very specific tasks.

So on that aspect, yeah. So, yeah. On the other hand, if you see some potential and someone would be able to do that and excel on it. Yeah, I've done it before. I've I've, I've told people you should consider getting their papers raised and, and, and going to Dartmouth. And I've helped people through that process. I always support as soon as you want to do that, because any, any person can walk off the street and go, go to an on forces career office and start that process. Just go, I want to become an officer and they go, right.

Cool, fill out this form and we'll do a system. If you go through the steps, it annoys me that you get sailors who go to their divisional chain of command and express that and it's like, OK, well, I'm not sure about that. So we're going to think about that and I'm going to come back to it at some point and just get your password finished and kind of like put up these artificial roadblocks. I think. Yeah, if you want to do it to his life, his career, ultimately the only thing that's different is that you have to give a recommend as their deal so that you don't kind of quote unquote, wasting the selection board's time.

But I think it's a bit rich that any civilian can go off and do that and waste the selection boards time. But but a sailor who's already demonstrated they can get through trading as a disciplined person is showing ambition. I do as you take them through like planning exercises and and like the leadership stuff and interview and that kind of thing. It's just to gauge how driven they are to do it. But I'm always really keen to help people. Didn't really help people as much as they possibly can if they come to me for that kind of thing because it was really dull.

Now this episode's becoming a master class on leadership. It's actually meant we are, we are, We are now a film defence and leadership and comedy podcast. We just keep adding specialisations on. Promotion between commander. So the next thing that happens is mutiny occurs. So a mutiny and counter mutiny. So we have James Gandolfini raids, the world's biggest small arm store and everyone gets absolutely tooled up. There's even ammunition for a belt fed in there and I'm not sure but I think it's like these 50 calibre ammunition.

I might be wrong, but it's like. That's some big rounds. Was there fucking? Belt fed on a on a modern day SSPN man. It's wild. It is wild. It's crazy. So that happens. They take control of the boat back off Denzel and oh, this is quite cool actually. So for the last 60 minutes of the movie, there's there's a running countdown of the time for the suspected launch window for the ultra nationalists seized nuclear weapons. So you've got that kind of running in the background is like it's counting down and it runs pretty much in real time.

Yeah. So that's really cool and that adds a bit of tension to what's going on, some real stakes because it's like, right, if we don't launch now and they do launch, we are we are screwed. Was into real time, like when there's just that kind of like like films, like like like films that are completely shot and it's all real time cool films. When it goes into real time, like right last like 30 or 60 minutes, it's it's game time. It's it's class. That's so cool, man. So you mentioned the old nationalists.

I know you're aware knows. As you mentioned, Michael Schiffer worked on one of the Call of Duty games. Bunch of them. And I'm just, you know what it is. I wonder if it was one of the ones that has that like has ultra nationalists in it. I'll check for you some of the IT was some of the early ones. And remember, no Russian. I bet. I bet you did. Let's have a look. Because yeah, that's like ultra nationalist something, isn't it? It's oh, no. So he did Call of Duty 2. Finest Hour and the original Call of Duty.

So no, he didn't do the didn't do the didn't do the ones with the all our nationalists and stuff because I thought, you know, was he mentioned on that? I thought. I wonder if he's just like rehashing a few by Diaz he previously had. So. He's written all. This military stuff and like the nuclear techno fellows and stuff. He also wrote LA Divorce with Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts. So, yeah, we have the countdown going on and Hackman has taken control of the boot again. Washington tweets from that like, we've never got this radio fixed.

The radio guy pipes up, I've never got the radio fixed. We can get the rest of the message. Hackman, to his credit, meets him halfway and says, look, you've got like, it's like 14 minutes till till the missile launch. He's like, right, you've got 7 minutes in order. So we can still affect our first strike, I suppose. And yeah, meets him halfway. And they do get it fixed. The message comes in and it's I think it's really well done because they go through the whole rigmarole of like verified, I concur, authenticated.

I can they both read it. They both read it. I concur, I concur. And then finally, it's only when Hackman grabs the gob stick that he that he says like abort nuclear launch and that kind of stuff. I've missed a couple of bits before that, sorry, which is Diego Boson's character and him getting the gun held to his head. And then as you mentioned earlier, Hackman holding the gun to peel Hillar's head, which is Scott Grimes, the actor Scott Grimes. So, yeah, the, the tension ratcheting up and the, and the critical nodes being the one combination that that Viggo Motson knows to get into the safe to get out the the launch.

Yeah, keys. Yeah, I mean, that's the point when you say just this, this excellent kind of you see Gene Ackman's reaction in in the character's kind of self self realisation that he knows he's messed up at this point. Yeah, Cat get in. Yeah, yeah, but which one is that Laszlo? Or is that this is? This is a little lassie B. He was just meowing at the door sort. Of oh here little man, a clear and present cat.

She's. For our viewers on YouTube and Spotify. Otherwise just a cat.

Yeah, you're absolutely right though. So that's that's when I think Hackman takes a look at himself and realises like, what am I doing? I'm holding it. Yeah, he realises that, that he's that he's lost in the source at this point and he's. Threatening Arabs? He's lost the yeah, threatening. I record exactly. It's like. You know you fucked up when you're you're holding a gun to Aragon, the son of Ara Thorn's head. My brother, my captain, my king. Yeah. My brother, my ex, Oh my king. Absolutely no one.

Incredible scenes. Yeah, so as I say, they finally had the resolution. They've got the second message. It was to call them off to abort. They do abort. Everyone breathes a massive sigh of relief. Actual cheering bricks out on board, because everyone's glad that we're not going to end the world today. I would probably be pretty glad to. And the muni is essentially quaffed. And I imagine you don't see it because it just cuts straight back to like the end sort of scene, but probably the most awkward week or two patrolling back.

Yeah, dead shipmates. I would have hated to have been in that wardroom. Those meal times must have been diabolical. Yeah, like. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, just like you tooling around with you essentially dead homies in the trunk. It's horrible. Yeah, this is the captain. Mum and dad are getting a divorce. There's nothing that you guys have done. Yeah. Yeah, awkward. Let me have the final sequence. They're they're having a a meeting with Admiral James Robot, who we'll of course, we'll see in a few years time.

The enemy, enemy of the state. He was Ben Bradley in All the President's Men. And he says, and I totally agree. Look, this it's incredible this has happened. Like we have these safeguards specifically for the situation that were not followed. The the end result essentially is that they were both right and they were both wrong. I would say some of the stuff that he was worrying about, it's not his job to worry about it. The the the weapons release piece, not necessarily kind of his his bag to worry about.

I guess you had the initial order, second order. I think his real duty was to find out what the 2nd order was. Easy to say that in hindsight, isn't it? But yeah, I do, I do. I do feel like. And then then they kind of the movie kind of hammers some points on that by am I saying that weapons release for some reasons from now on is draw directly by the President United States? Thank God for that man. Oh, yeah, that's what you want, right? Yeah, that's very. Relieve. A very small, steady pair of hands on that button.

Thank God for that, man. It's like, I mean, there. I mean, for one, there's a story when apparently Richard Nixon got so wasted that he he wanted water Cambodia be nukes and Henry Kissinger had like talk him down apparently. And the wild thing is because I'm like watching a lot of venture brothers at the minute. I keep thinking of Doctor Henry Killinger. And just like, if you haven't seen venture brothers, none of this is working on like a kind of visual level. But just like as little skull of us and he's like Mr. President, do not nuke Cambodia half asleep.

Instead, go to bed, look into my my mystical bag of murder. It's like that's a really deep we had cut and I'm very sorry. But yeah, it's awesome that the US President Scott like got, you know, the ability to do that. It's awesome. It's it's a period of unparalleled stability for everybody. Nobody's worried about it's us all. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. If aliens are listening to this podcast as they look over just the scorched earth, it's just in a radiated wasteland. Yet somehow we've picked up this broadcast off the Internet.

We're sorry. Sorry man. I'm I've not listened to the audiobook Nuclear War, a Scenario by Annie Jacobson. And if you want something to really creep you out and make you fear for impending nuclear crisis, that is the book to go for. It goes, it goes through like literally there's a chapter and like what happened to us for the 1st 4 seconds and then it's like, and then like 2 minutes and then like 24 minutes later. Honestly, it's breathtaking detail. But at the beginning of the book, it goes through a list of everyone that she interviewed to to piece together.

And it's like senior members of government, the light of CIA director, defence secretaries, everything. Yeah. It's really, really well researched, fascinating. A lot all the way through it. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Really, really, really good book. Cool. Final thing, I suppose one last little bit of irritating Quintin Tarantinoism, is that that whole show about Lipizanas. Yeah, what? I don't know in. I don't know if this is deliberate or not, but Ram is it, Ramsey is. Ramsey insists they're from Portugal and Hunter insists they're from Spain, or vice versa.

Yeah. They're both wrong. They're from Slovenia, so I don't know, that's meant to be like a indication that they're both wrong. And that's like the whole the whole points or if it's just like, you know what I mean? But but the whole thing is just smacks of Tarantino and it's just like, OK. Yeah, I mean, there's already enough kind of story beats that illustrate the difference of opinion of character and of personality between the two guys. You don't need to put in the we had actually these racist horse analogies are from this country.

Actually, you're wrong, dickhead. The from the from this country and I'm still really racist, you know? That is the, that is the racist thing, isn't it? Yes, the whole, the horses are. The horses are all white and actually, no, they're they're born black. And yeah, OK, yeah. And it's and it's and if the stories are true. They also only are still around because patterns stole stop the Russians from eating them. But. Now that's the real story. This film should be digging into that incredibly based of pattern.

And probably the only. Base thing pattern has ever done, to be fair. What did you say? Yeah. Not often you hear based and patent in the same. Let's just talk about Will Patton, who was incredibly based. You have no idea what matter of power can do. Legend. I was I was there as well. I can understand why Denzel Washington was was really riled up if the whole let was on our things and let's inject some weird kind of racism by Quentin Tarantino, the whitest man in the world. Quentin Tarantino was the whitest guy in the world.

And I can kind of see why Denzel Washington would have been a bit kind of honked off that, you know, this guy's just right in this because it's it wasn't it wasn't necessary. And they? Would have been shooting this at the same time like Pulp Fiction came out. Yeah, and. If you think about like some of the stuff that that Talentino himself says in that movie, it's like, I don't know how he can. And you know, maybe he uses the whole like, you know, some of my best friends are black excuse because obviously Samuel Jackson's there for most of it, but I don't.

Know, yeah, what if I'm what if I'm singing along of my favourite rap song while I'm writing my Lipazano stallion, You know, ridiculous. Yeah, like the like he's like. But come on. As, as Sammy has said, some of my most intelligent horses of black. Just shoot them. What's 1000 yards for? Because it takes 1000 yards to torpedoes to orange. Jesus, you're fucking to get on this ship.

Snapshot 2:00 and 4:00 snapshot. 2. And four. Categories, gentlemen, for this amazing movie. OK, so first one, casting guys that ladies, I won't do Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman because they are Titans of cinema. I remember those Titans. But we have Oscar from a little list. We've got Matt Craven who played Zimmer, the 10 Zimmer, he's in the other movie we're talking about doing this week, A few Good Men. He was in that show Under the Bridge last year with clearly Gladstone. If you saw that he was in the Pacific and he was in Deja Vu by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington as well.

So he became a repeat customer we got. And he played the CIA director of an X-Men first class. Yes, he did. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Everything comes back to those 3 letters. Speaking of that, we've got George Dasunda, who played the chief of the boat, who we of course know from no way out. Yes. Awesome. And he was in The Deer Hunter, and he was also the partner of Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct. You know, I know. And course, George Sinza was a German, much like our Sanya. He was Bavarian, actually.

Sanya. Oh, try.

To try to try to try to fish him in, try to get reel in a big one, but it didn't work I've. Tried. Off the hook. Broad, broad, broad. It's October, I am electing to ignore Bavaria.

Viggo Mortensen Aragon, son of Arathon. Enough said. Yeah, he's been a few films. Did you know that he did break a stone? He's not really James Gandolfini. Tony Soprano series like 30 in the Loop, Last Castle, Robert Redford, True Romance, son of a Tony Scott movie. The guy's a legend. Not really that guy. I loved that when they went to the luxuriously equipped small arms locker, everybody's got a Beretta R.E.M. 9 or a 92 apart from James got Gamalfini, who's like, hey, forget about it. And he's got the fucking and he's got the wand called 1911.

That's on the ship that I'm you and all these things you say. I'm so ship pilled by the dialogue in the film. But yeah, I say I'm I'm I'm flip flopping on that kind of haven't had Canon that James Gandolfi and he just brought his own piece one day. Because I think I've said this before, but if you look at like a lot of these Steven Seagal money laundering era films, I think he's using his personal sidearm a lot of them because there's the same there's the same kind of busted old 1911 that he's using.

But it's funny as hell because because he still can't shoot with that. Like he blinks when he shoots and it's terrible. That's a whole other shit show. But yeah like I love the fact that just the most mob coded character is parking a good old 1911 baby back-to-back to World wars winner. Forget about it. Single stock magazine. 9 millimetre kills the body, 45 kills the soul. Big bullet, son. Steve Zahn, he was in the white loads few years ago. He's in silo this year. One of the only one of the best things about that season.

Rescue Dawn. Sahara War for the Planet of the Apes as well Suzanne of Suzanne Ryan Felipe we talked to already crew intentions. Yeah. Gosford Park as well. Robert Altman's was that his last film might have been Scott Grimes as PO, Hila Malarkey and Banda Brothers and who's in the Oval. I'm always not sure very much, but I'm aware he's in it and he got his kind of big break as a cast regular in the ER back in the day as well. The ginger doctor Daniel von Bargain, I think I'm saying that right, is our Russian ultra naturalist.

Ultra nationalist. So the Russian Ultra Naturist, he's like, we must be nude all the time. Mother Russia demands your nudity. Mother Russia demands you to be naked in Siberia. Daniel von Bargain is who plays the Russian ultra nationalist, is Kruger in Seinfeld from Kruger's Industrial Smoothing. He's also in The Postman. He was in RoboCop 3, The Bad RoboCop, and he was in Oprah, The Wear Out There. Do you know what like a really good like just like a bit of a wink to the fans, which actually would have made the film terrible and watchable would be if if George just stands as dad just like thinned him out like he did in in this use, you got it.

You kind of smooth out silk sheets of the hot date when a babe. That's the CNN footage. Yes. It's over. It's all over. Reporting live from FS Fox. Says forget a little bad Constanza. Just like bitching about at a press conference that you somehow got into. Danny Nucci is the sooner supervisor. TSMI. Think the guy who prefers the KB era Silver Surfer. He was in the Rock and Titanic and alive. The famous cannibalism in the Andes movie. And then finally we got Lilo Brancato, who was the radio operator maintainer.

He was in a Bronx Tale, The Sopranos, and which we're turning Scott again in Enemy of the State. Cool. Should we do some quotes from that movie? So of course, like I said, one of my favourite ones is the con console. Not holy shit Sir, it's right on top of us. Simply because I like the fact that he's maintaining the proper format of the message and that he's like, you know, set up. Hello, con, this is so hot and then he's losing his right. Holy shit Sir, it's been I'm trying to find the one particular one that I really liked as well.

Why you do that? I I was a big fan of Captain Ramsey's policy broadcasts. It says. All I ask is that you keep up with me. If you can't, then that's strange sensation you'll be feeling in the city of your pants will be my boot of your ass. I love that man. Like I say, good expectation management. Yeah, I saw the whole is lying to hunt out and you open it beats the film when the when the one like the product the sale of the submarine says heading out of port and he's like I'm going to give you a tiny bit of advice if you want to run, but someday the very worst you can do was worry about yourself or try to impress me.

I can't stand save asses and I wouldn't about kiss asses. And I really like that save asses and kiss asses. That's that's good. And The thing is, this is when it's still trying to show you that this guy is a good leader and something like genuinely, that's a good kind of like, I mean, if I was in a job and new position and someone's like, look, just trying to impress me, just just do a good job, you know? Yeah, that's actually cool because you know, obviously you you work with people in management rules and stuff who really do love having a kiss out surround them.

The interesting thing about Hackman at the start of this is that you're saying the right stuff. I don't know if he, I don't know if he walks out walk particularly well. I think, I think he I think he would if he fundamentally agreed with Hunter's worldview. But I think once that schism comes in, that's kind of off the off the menu. It's frustrating though, because yeah, that that relationship, the the COXO relationship on a, on any, any kind of warship is super important for it to be truthful, honest and and and kind of also harmonious.

Nothing worse than a ship with a seal and the exo do not get along. The other thing you don't want is just a pure yes man. You don't want the, you want the exo to just be like, yes, Sir, no, Sir, and just going with every single one of the seals. Good ideas. The seal needs you to be that kind of moderating voice that that because you are meant to be the person who has the the his ears to the ground has the vibe of the I was going to say men, but the the workforce. Especially in this situation when one of the main functions of the XO is to concur or not concur.

These are. Critical. Just say call on 2 new missiles, yeah? Yeah, and it's the kind of thing that at this level of command, it's a weird one as well because it takes quite a lot of balls for Hunter to slip up here. Whilst he is backed by by regulation, he's a 2 1/2 F-10 commander. He's probably gusting commander and would and would almost certainly get promoted out of this this draft. Ramsey is A4 ring captain and is probably should by his demeanour, he's probably topped out the captain. He kind of runs his bit of roost, but he is not a politician and is not going to make flag rank.

That's the impression you get from it. A bit like, a bit like, a bit like maverick and topical Maverick. He's a foreign captain. He's not. He's never going to be an opera. He's an operator primarily. So yeah, it takes quite a large amount of moral courage for for Hunter to step up in this situation. And that's kind of what you need as an EXO. The only thing that you don't see enough of from Hunter in this movie is being genuinely good exo in terms of managing executive standards of the of the platform.

He should have been all over that noise, quiet state stuff. He should have been all over the damage control firefighting stuff. He shouldn't have been donning a suit and jumping into the fire. He should have been in charge of the incident and. Ryan Felipe to get his ship to get his fish off the boat. Oh yeah, that I think should have left all that dirty fish tank on board. Get that fish tank out of here, sailor. What mental. Yeah, amazing. Quotes. How would you like that cigar? It's good, Sir. Well, don't like it too much.

They're more expensive than drugs, I. Love that one, that was so good oh man. Yeah, man. God, Captain Ramsey. I don't trust air. I can't see. I love that. That's good. As well last. He's got great quotes. He really does. He really does. And and it's just an absolute brilliant performance by by our kind of Saint of the podcast that is Gene Hackman. That's just brilliant. The guy exudes menace when he wants to. He shows vulnerability when he wants to as well. Like this, the scenes when he's like in his cabin, when he does look like legitimately outnumbered and cowed by the world briefly, you know, but it's when he's at Bay, when he's held like he does he like, you know, I mean, like his performance, he shows us like accident vulnerability while also being a fucking cycle, you know?

This is it, Yeah. This is why he's such a good character. He's quite complex. Like I said, he's he is a genuinely intelligent guy. He's not. He's not a a mad cowboy. Yeah, we're here to preserve democracy in our classes. That one's brilliant. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I really agree with that. That's that's exactly how it runs. It's it's one of the greatest ironies of military service that it's an autocracy, creators, defence, democracy. Yeah. No, it's absolutely true. OK, Mobius, open the door.

The chain of commands, The chain I beat you with. But just yet, like the scene, the scene when like the scene when when Ravetti kicks off with the guy who he previously had the dust up with, when he's, you know, standing guard and he's like belting him. He's kicks his ass and he's like, you know, unlock the door, Mobius.

How else we got needle drops? So soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and I already talked about Eternal Father. That's pretty much it for this movie. IMDb trivia is really good for this movie. There's a lot of really good stuff. I'm excited. So we've talked about some of it already. We've talked about Quentin Tarantino, all that kind of stuff. One really cool thing is as I mentioned at the beginning of the movie, The U.S. Navy did not sanction or support the filming of this movie in any way apart from the, I think the provision of one retired technical advisor.

So to get the footage of the Alabama class submarine diving, they got a tip off Tony Scott and the film crew. The producers got a tip off from a sailor that there was a boat movement happening out of pill and they got a helicopter, a private helicopter and over flew the the sub whilst it was on the surface. He got in touch with it with you. Jeff told it to towards the leaf essentially and it didn't leave and in order to stop being filmed the boat dived, which is exactly what they wanted to happen.

Get in. That's actually amazing. Yeah, it's cool. Cool as yeah, the US Navy found the subject of the film objectionable and inaccurate. And I think they they were concerned about the the breakdown of, of naval discipline that that kind of took place on board with the Moody and stuff. It's not, it's not cool. Is it quite funny, though, because this is 10 years after about nine years after Top Gun, Tony Scott, Brookhimer Simpson. And then if you couldn't get enough of that, and there's a, there's a fair bit of breakdown of military discipline in that movie too, proceeding below the Hard Deck and a lot good jazz the the movie.

So they got away with that shit, right? Yeah, that's it. Classic Fly, but it's Wafu's. The funding premise of the movie is is kind of based on a bit of a true story from during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a Soviet submarine, the 59 attempted to infiltrate the US Navy blockade by running submerged. By doing so it had been put out of contact with it's central submarine command in in Moscow and then when the US destroyers started dropping signal depth charges to force the submarine to the surface, the Soviet captain, Valentin Grigorovic Savitsky believes that war had broke out between the US and the Soviet Union.

His sentiments were concurred on board by the the political officer, a guy called Ivan Simonovich Marcinikov. However, Savitsky's second in command, Vasily Akrapov, who's also the flotilla Commodore, had refused. All three needed to agree before launching, but because of our contact for so long with nuclear orders, Akrapov convinced the captain to surface and they were found themselves surrounded by US destroyers. However, their comms were re established and they received orders to return home, therefore averting nuclear war.

Crazy. Just tough, man, yeah. So that's obviously 1962 when that happened. Yeah. Wild. Yeah. Washington took the role just so he could play opposite Gene Hackman. That's pretty cool. Don Simpson and Joey Brookhammer originally offered Val Kilmer one of the headlining rules, but he declined and years later Kilman knew that it was one of the few films that you wish he had agreed to be in. The role offered to Kilmer was never formally specified, but could have been. Could have been I think Hunter or Weps probably.

Yeah, probably a bit too young to be the the captain, I think at this point at the Gene Hackman role. Yeah. Plus I imagine I bet they got Gene Hackman cast early for this and used that as like hey you've got Hackman playing a terrible pissed off submarine captain to get some poor people in. You know he was staffed. Absolutely. He was, he was, he was the book for this project. Here's a cool behind the scenes facts. So the bridge set for the for the I say bridge control room set for the submarine was built on a big huge hydraulic gimbal so they could rotate and stuff while they were doing it.

Same one that they used for the Hunt for October. I mentioned. I can't mention there was a technical advisor for the movie. Beard is listening to Technical Advisor and he was a commanding officer of the real Yes S Alabama. Get him. And he can be seen in the board of inquiry scene. He's the man with no hair sitting next to James Robot. So that's the one technical advisor they did get. Guess you pass on the role of Captain Ramsey Tommy Lee Jones. That would have been good casting as well. Al Pacino was also off the role of Captain Ramsey and Brad Pitt expressed sincere interest in playing Hunter whilst Pacino was in the ring for Ramsey, but when Pacino pulled out, so did pit.

That would have been a really good matchup. Think anyway, especially kind of like isn't, isn't Brad Pitt like much kind of bigger than Al Pacino as well? I'm sure Brad Pitt's like a kind of bit taller than Al Pacino. So I would reflect with see the kind of pit Pacino square up in in the control room because I'm pretty sure there's a bit of a height disparity. That would have been kind, yeah. On the subject of heights disparities, Tom Cruise was also considered for the role of Latin commander Hunter.

Tom allegedly 5 foot 8. Cruise, I can't Like Tom Cruise is obviously one of the many heroes of the pods because he'll be in as as in these movies eventually when we start covering them. But I don't see him as a submariner really. Just I just don't see him thriving in a submarine environment and I can't explain why, but I can't seem being a fighter pilot. I can't seem being a submariner. You're a fundamentally different breed of of mariner. And I mean, like a fighter pilot jobs a job for a little guy, isn't it?

You know? And Gene Hackman is like 6 foot 2. So just like, just Tom Cruise as wonder, Gene Hackman still as the captain. The sediment she had punches some of the face. You'd have to kind of squat down a little bit. Would have just added this extra bit of physical comedy. But he's just, oh, it's going to go down here. Just sorry. That's cool, man. I'm going to quickly cut across to the goofs page. There's one mental one, which is that last scene where they go to the headquarters. It says US Naval Headquarters, but it's spelled Naval, as in NAVEL.

Oh. No way. Like like belly button? Oh, man, I didn't say that. Oh. Or naval pipe. There is such a thing as a naval pipe on warships, which is where the anchor cable goes down into. And it's spelled that way. Right. But. But not naval as in naval. The Navy. Yeah, exactly. Naval and the headquarters are in DC. They're not in. Not in Pearl Harbour. Yeah. Cool. That's trivia. Should we do Notes from the Peanuts gallery? A significant amount of these reviews are more like this film's really good as far as the basin kind of thing.

It's hard to find funny stuff. 3 1/2 stars. Don't know who needs to hear this right now but if some off the chain asshole and a Red Hat gives you in legal order to start World War three, for the love of all that is kindly please refuse. Like don't turn that cake slash push that button slash, pull the trigger. This means you TYSM, Senate signed me and like, if you already did, you know, no judgement or anything. Like peace I guess right? In your last moments, if you have any, you could totally watch this Tony Scott movie from the 90s.

About 30 aggro dudes with guns yelling at each other with close quarters against the background of flashing panels at Dutch angles and super harsh primary colours minus yellow for two solid hours. Which if you're not out and wake up again, will still be going on. But if you manage to watch the whole thing, await. Like if you can't sleep because you might have, you know, started not a hot war that just maybe could consume more life on earth in a majorly uncruel confragration, you will inevitably find yourself wondering what happens, which faction of yelling dudes, either the nuclear war right now or the nuclear war maybe later camp will inevitably defeat the other or come to a mutual understanding.

But it is possible the junior actions and the actions of those like you. You might not have time to finish the movie, but you can probably guess how it turns out. Because it is a Hollywood movie and not real life, which is just as inevitable and depressed. Fasting and bound to predictable narrative, but have a super nice day. OK, TTFN. TTFN. Not a single full stop on that whole last paragraph, so obviously I had to kind of have a few breathing breaks there. Tony Scott's feel safe and close as he got to a chamber drama.

Basically a feature length rendition of those surveillance fan sequences from Enemy of the State. Everything seemingly lit by the glow of sauna and fluorescent lights. Gene Hackman is also straight up playing everyone's toss in this movie. Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman comparing Dick sizes is pretty entertaining for two hours, but take a drink every time the spot Tarantino's dialogue washing ashore and you'll be drowning in more than just Crimson Tide. Watching ashore. Yeah, Tarantino's punch UPS really stick out like a sore thumb.

A sore thumb that kind of rules. And all time Zimmer score and Tony really using that red, green and blue lightning in the sub with full all caps advantage. Washington and Hackman shouting match and Dandel Feeney clearly being turned on by holding a gun. Dudes rocking underwater and they're great. 1 He have four stars. Zimmer makes brass scream while a bunch of damp boys lit in red and blue splash sweat everywhere and shout into microphones. Are we not all damp boys yelling in God's submarine? Right.

Most egregious military industrial complex oversell, I think. I think in reality it's the idea that two men could hold the entire nuclear arsenal hostage with competing orders. I think there's more field safes in the real world than that. I don't think it would have turned into a mutiny, the mutiny situation. I think it's also possibly the fact that SSBNS for some reason the set up for like platoon level engagements with small arms. Yeah, it's wild to me and but it's not gross of ourselves, but it's a rather silly of ourselves.

Like I said, unless to go for World War One kind of thing when they'll surface and send some guys into a nearby time town to like harass enemy supply lines and stuff. But this movie be better with Doctor Jack Ryan. Doctor Jack Ryan on a submarine before and it went pretty. Well, I did go pretty well. I did go pretty well. It did go well, but I find it hard to imagine in this particular case start I would fit in there somehow. Yeah, his special skill is his knowledge of Ramius's psyche, isn't he?

His special skill is that he knows to mention his wife at the right time. Yeah, I don't think that comes completely handy when she happened. I think if he mentions Gene Hacker's wife, he'd be like, well, she did just divorce me because I'm just too, too irritating a submarine commander, so get out of my control room. He. Would be like, you know, that guy in 22 like young officer who was like wife is just like terminally horned up and he just said completely like disregards and he like tells her, Oh, I need you like practise marching around the room and she's like naked.

He's like no clothes. He'd feel like that. He'd be. He'd be really difficult, I think. Well, this movie better. We've talked to Richard Kimball, Doctor. Richard Kimble wouldn't have let that guy die, right? That was some pretty, that was some pretty weak ass sepia that was being done. You know some. Diabolical First Doctor Richard. Yeah, Kimball would have been like full on breaking that sternum sepia and he'd have dragged that guy back from the great beyond. And it would have been been a good win for a Chuck killer.

That guy, that guy pipes the casualties name over main broadcast and says he's dying and and everyone else in the boat can hear that yeah, that's pretty bad. That's against my hippo law, I. Was going to say on the one MC we're going to do a HIPAA violation at 3/2. With this movie, you've been better with President James Marshall. Get off my plane. President James Marshall would have gone over from four of those Russian separatists himself. There'd be no need for nukes. He would have parachuted into Russia and punched that guy out, bang in the face and then that's it called off.

You would have you would have gone in there Jason Alexander playing a guy who knew the Russian separatist leader from work and and he just like, oh, here I wanted to go shit managed back psych and he just bang them out kick his. Ass Is there a role for Peter Falk? There's a weird little guy in this movie. Fantasyland. I could see him as as like the comms guy. Yeah, yeah, he's got, he's got big WE WE energy. Just one more question, are we sure the signal is complete? Unfortunately, I don't think, yeah, just one more question.

Like mid fantasy land. It would be at least funny if he played like the Captain, but that would totally destroy the film. It would make it dash, but it would be kind of funny. Just saying Peter Fault punching Denzel Washington in the face just because I'd like to see Peter Fault beaten someone up by trying to. But no. Yeah, Sandy has got a spot on. He'd be classed as like comms guy who's, you know, the end of his career. He's just happy being a radio specialist. He'd get that thing online in like 5 minutes.

You could do, yeah, He could be a really solid Petty Officer or he could be chief of the boat, a chain smoking chief of the boat, Yes, just like he's doing some piss off a fucking chief officer or officer officer folk. He's got a flash on him. He's got a big flash on him. You. Know he knows how both are Subman films we've watched. I was being a chunky fella in both of them, right? It's a weird truth they're developing. Yeah, yeah. It's weird truth. It's like, it's like it's big boy season. We've got to get a fucking huge chip for the boat, yeah.

Chang goes off the. Boat Yeah, this is a good movie for Lieutenant Commander Samuel L Jackson, U.S. Navy. Yes, he's he would be good in this. He would. I think he would be one of the other officers that I think would have backed up Denzel, just not, not not on racial lines just because he's he's got a head on his shoulders. He's also, and he would have it would have quelled tensions a bit more because I think he's got quite a direct word of command. Like, no one's launching a missile until I see a damn thing.

I don't know, Like, something like that, I guess. Yeah. Like, imagine raising his voice. Never be like. Well, yeah. Through Jeffrey Rice, Jeffrey Wright could be in this movie as well. Jeffrey Wright also could have played a slightly less cliche chief of the boat as well. Yeah, he definitely could. This He could be one of your super brainiac senior rates who doesn't want to become an officer, but you can. But they've got a brain on the sides of a planet. That's a good. I like that. I like that one.

That's cool. It's very believed. This movie is not Prue or anti CIA completely absent score unchanged. So I guess it just leaves me to ask you guys, what's what's, what's your Ding Chavez award for missed opportunity in the movie Chinese? Did this film miss in there? The only one I can think of, and I'll see you. I want to get your take on this Weps Vigo Mortensen's rule seems a little bit unresolved. Yeah. So he was stuck in a rock and a hard place between the overwhelming pressure at good point to to back the captain.

He also had a personal friendship with Denzel, which you see at the beginning of the movie when he's at his kids birthday party. So they've got they've got history. They've served together before and he's stuck between that loyalty versus friendship. What I and it was kind of left hanging what I would like to have seen the boy. There probably wasn't room for it in the movie, but another and also because like that gap between missions aborted and then meeting with Abra Robards, clearly months worth of investigation is taking place in between, right?

So it wouldn't have made sense for them to then bump into Viggo Monson because they've obviously been separated off presumably both Ramsey and Hunter off doing like hold of a job somewhere else in the meantime kind of thing. If you were trying to think about it like too lit feel like I am and ruin the fun. But what should have happened, right, is maybe is another scene between Denzel and Webs where they kind of go, look, I understand, like, why you did what you had to do. But maybe he's still a little bit pissed off.

And he's like, but now I have seen your true colours, and you're not the man I thought you'd be in a crisis kind of thing. Yeah. And then maybe, like, maybe he tries to apologise to Hunter. And maybe Hunter doesn't necessarily accept it as graciously as he could have done because actually, you know, when it, when the shit really hit the fan, he kind of let me down. Yeah. And that friendship is forever altered. You know, just my thought. Yeah, the opportunity flag. Gene Hackman punch in the face another three or four times.

Just a totally, totally, totally underlined how much of A badass Denzel Washington is. It's like an extended scene when like, the Captain totally destroys his own respect from a man by just punching Denzel Washington again and again and again until he becomes like really tired. It becomes really tired and that's awesome. And he just bangs him out and won because he's been in training for a hurricane this whole time. Yes. Ah, the old rope, a dope. The old rope dope, Well it's stricken the book. You let your line about a shot, knock the shit out your face until he tyres himself out and then he just three up 1.

Go guys. Since this is our 10th episode, I thought it'd be fun to play a special game that I created. Are you guys up for a little game I made called You Don't know Jack I've. Got bad news for you? The CIA did not invent crack, OK?

Yes, always, always up for these, for these games and frolics. Gentlemen, we all know that St Tom of Clancy has gifted us at the great statesman or assistant spy, Jack Ryan. He himself has been portrayed on the silver screen by many actors, not least of all Alec Baldwin. And Alec Baldwin, he may not be the most definitive Jack Ryan. That title, I believe, is held by Harrison Ford. Some believe Chris Pine, but he is the definitive John Francis. Jack Donaghy, the vice president of East Coast television and microwave oven programming for General Electric in the TV series 30 Rock by Tina Fey.

So, gentlemen, if you'd like to join me, what I'm going to do now is read to you some partial quotes from the work of Saint Tom of Clancy and from Saint Tina of Fey. I want you to tell me where they come from and we'll see if you really don't know Jack. Amazing. I'm going to start with an easy one. I'm going to need you guys to keep score because I'm probably going to forget. And also for everyone I get wrong that you guessed correctly, I'm going to take a shot of this this ginger root. Experience speed.

OK cool. First one is no one has ever won a land war in Russia. Thank you, Rock. Damn it, you're all right. Hang on. The full quote. The full quote is no one has ever won a land one Russia. Not Napoleon, not Hitler, and not Balki in the only 9th season of Perfect Strangers.

Take it all So hot. OK, second, second one to Roy. You're correct. I didn't even give it Sonia a chance to guess because you defeat too quickly. That was a practise, right? Awesome.

Right. The next one is the CIA captured a North Korean spy. The CIA captured a North Korean spy. Jack Ryan. No, Sonia, yeah. I'm going to go with Jack Ryan. It is Jack Donaghy in season 6 episode 20 and 30 Rock. The full quote is the CIA captured a North Korean spy so we were able to arrange a prisoner swap next week in exchange for my wife. They get their spy back. The creative Hollister sweatshirts and a signed headshot of Don Johnson. Loan would like destabilise North Korea though. OK, here we go.

Third one, what the government is good for is collecting taxes.

I'm. Not sure I'm I'm giving that to Jack Ryan, given that Jack Ryan at some point elects to become the government. That's correct. It is a Tom Clancy in person quote. The full quote is what the government is good for is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else and and that is Tom Clancy on Kudlu and Kramer 2003 financial show on ITV America. Hold up his writing. Is this fire or grave? Couldn't have before. If you want to kick a tiger in his ass dot dot dot.

If you want to kick a tiger in his ass, dot dot dot.

I'm going to say I'm going to let Sanny a go first. Actually throwing Sanny into the breach. He's the full on hope this time. As really tricky without Folk Rd because it could turn on into a full on weird Jake Ryan and all the being made and some discussion. I'm going to go with Jack Ryan, you. Say Jack Ryan. OK. It is Jack Ryan. It's If you want to kick a tiger in his ass, you better have a plan for dealing with his teeth from the teeth of the tiger. Which is the first?

Which is It's the first Jack Ryan junior novel.

OK. Next one, I'm calling up Operation Righteous. That's got to be Jack Donaghy, man, don't you? Yeah. You're right. It is Jack Donahue. The full quote is, I'm calling it Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning. OK, number six. Now, I've only ever seen this kind of thing on dead people during Operation Desert Storm. Now, I've only ever seen this kind of thing on dead people during Operation Desert Storm. Not Jack Ryan. Don't think it's time. OK, I'm. Going to go Jack doggy. Yeah, it's a rock. It's doctor.

Spa chairman. Full quote. Now, I've only ever seen this kind of thing on dead people during Operation Desert Storm. I actually wrote a report on it, but my commander refused to pass it up to Saddam. Cookie Times. That's absolutely brilliant. That's it. I love it. OK #7 you guys are kicking my ass here #7 if the first toddler wears it, it has to be fashionable. If the first toddler wears it, it has to be fashionable. Jack Ryan. Hey guys, You're sure, right? It's Tom Clancy and executive orders. Man, I was hoping you'd go for like a Jenna Maroney there in 30 Rock.

Now, man, it's just because obviously with me, like reading, reading the Bear and the dragon, like it like leans into the lot of our Jack Ryan family, man, where are the first children kind of thing? OK, but on that subject #8 just can't wait to take this sexual energy back to Kathy. Just can't wait to take the sexual energy back to Kathy. Danny, do you want to lead this one? What are the many wives of Jack Ryan? One is called Kathy. Yeah, that's why. I'm willing to risk it are. You going Jack Ryan?

I'm going Jack Donaghy. Rory gets it. Okay, so it's. Ryan doesn't talk about sex. He's Catholic. He thinks we have things about sex. Correct, it's Devon. It's Devon Banks, the character played by Will Arnett in season 2 of 30 Rock. Full quote. Jack is enjoying the party. Devon. How could it not be? Can't wait to bring the sexual energy back to Cathy. Jack. Devon, don't do this. It may not be worth it. Devon Why not? We're perfect for each other. She loves, she loves that I work out loud and talk to people, and I love how she enjoys crawling into cabinets and vents and other enclosed spaces, like behind the dryer for instance #9 that child is better off in Somalia.

Jesus, I'm going to let Sonia go on this one. I'm just casually drinking the ginger right now because I'm getting so many wrong. Broken. Yeah, you're just, you're just like choosing to experience beige without the big Klingon guy shouting experience beige at you experience beige. That child is better off in Somalia. Sonia what? Say not. As the same energy as that doesn't storm cold. You're saying, you're saying play rock. I have to. Saying Jack Ryan, but from one of the young Jack Ryan books. Well, Sonya's got it.

Yeah, I. Don't have any noxious to drink, I'm sorry. Full, full, full. Quote is oh God don't adopt that child is better off in Somalia. It could be a pirate or a warlords concubine it. Could be errant. Liz Leonard and two Jenna maroni #10 no sense spooking him. We wait for him to come in nice and close while we do our famous imitation of a hole in water.

Sonya. Famous invitation. Fucking idea. It's. Gotta be, it's gotta be. Yeah.

You're right, it's captain to Beloved in the hunt for October. That's a really easy one. Next 1 #11 There are only two ways we are beaten, we die or we give up. And I'm not giving up. I'm gonna go Jack Donaghy with that one. Sounds a bit too strong. Yeah, Tom, the noise isn't it for war Draggy. It's not elaborate enough. It's a little bit too strong for Jack Ryan, but it is Tom Clancy. It's a John Clark novel. Against all enemies. Yeah, about #12 The design forces the sitter into what the Israeli military call is stress position.

That's just whoever made my new disc. The design forces the sitter into what the Israeli military call is stress position. Yeah, it is. Full quote is Liz Lemon says that's a bad couch, Jack. And he says it is unfortunate the design forces to sit into what there's really military call a stress position. It cuts off circulation to the legs, while some are simply spreading out the rib cage, making it difficult to breathe. You say if it was a true Jack Ryan quote it would have always been included like the Hebrew translation of of Stress Position.

It's the extra extra techno thriller granularity and detail. Right, Final one. I don't know who's winning anymore. I know I'm losing final one. Son of a bitch. Both. Oh, it's one or the other. One or the other. Geez, Sonia, I'll let you take a lead on this one, man, since my gambit failed when I thought there was. Oh, it's both. It's both. Frick at the end of it, you're upsetting. Something Jack Ryan might say in non Florida October like in the book version. Yeah, you go for Jack Ryan. Yeah, it's Jack Donaghy, he says.

Son of a bitch. Banks. What brings you to New York? Drawn to the phonic nature of our skyline, You're probably thinking of the quote. You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch from Hunt for October. Got you on a technicality. Just rise on technicalities. Technically correct. The best. Case correct, because then a quote, my friend, like an investigation. Details matter. Yes, Rachel.

I've got bad news for you. The CIA did not even crack.

OK, God, cool. Well, thank you very much for playing You Don't Know Jack where you proved that actually you do know Jack pretty well, guys. So congratulations, I guess. Or what is left to say is that we've come, sadly once again to the end of another episode of Clear and Present Dudes, the 10th episode of Clear and Present Dudes. That's right. If you enjoyed this episode, then please leave a comment or a like on Apple podcasts. Send an e-mail please to [email protected] if you have any suggestions or any comments you'd like to make.

And yeah guys, what movie are we doing next? Whose choices are next? Is it yours? Yours. Rory? It's. Amazing. Well. I think that'd be yours, yeah. Well, in that case, we are sticking with someone who's played one of the jacks, Ryan. We are moving away from the US military, but I think the US government is involved. We're going to do a film that I last watched when I was being evacuated from Iceland when the volcano went off. We're going to watch Unstoppable, the Chris Payne runaway train disaster thriller.

Oh, I've never seen that. I haven't seen that one in quite a while. Yeah, buddy the last time I saw that I was on like an A pretty old airliner flying out of Iceland after airline traffic had been stopped because the explosion from the vault and and the decided that to troll were like this wasn't an airliner that had like seat back consoles and stuff. There was 1 little TV towards like the cockpit and they literally put on this like really washed out faded colour pirate looking VHS of Unstoppable, a disaster movie as we're flying away from the country with an exploding volcano on a really beaten up old bone and it was like you're trolling us all.

So yes, we're doing Unstoppable. That's brilliant. Hey, I'll tell you what. I really like Chris Pine. Actually, I know we talked a little bit smack about he's not maybe, maybe he's not the definite of Jack Ryan, but I really loved him in Attentions of Dragons or Among Thieves recently. He's a very charismatic individual, very good actor. So yeah, looking forward to that. It should. Be good. Would like to to take one step ahead for the next episode and answer your usual question. Mike, how would this have gone down in Germany?

No train. No train. All that is left for us to say then, guys, is we've been no bits. Clear. And present. Almost, almost got it. Almost got it. Yeah.

Crimson Tide (1995)

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