Crimson Tide

Crimson Tide (1995) takes place on a nuclear submarine. A partial launch order arrives, then a second message is cut off mid transmission and nobody knows whether it cancels the order or confirms it. The captain wants to launch, the executive officer wants to wait for the rest of the message. The entire film is these two men making their case. The Navy cooperated at first and the production went aboard the USS Florida in 1993. Then it withdrew. It objected to a number of things in the script, above all to a mutiny on an American vessel. The story first presented to the Navy turned on a computer malfunction; once it became a mutiny against the captain, that was the end of it. Quentin Tarantino did uncredited work on the script, and the dialogue loaded with pop culture references is his. Some of what he added caused an argument with Denzel Washington on set, which Washington said years later he had put behind him. It cost 53 million dollars and grossed 157.4 million worldwide, with three Oscar nominations for editing, sound and sound editing. It runs 116 minutes. Good for: tension in confined spaces, two actors in conflict, and submarine films. Less good for: Tony Scott's visual manner is heavy and the score never stops pushing. Do not look for military accuracy; that is exactly why the Navy walked away. The supporting characters exist only to take sides.