Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Barents Sea, August 12th, 2000. During a Russian naval exercise, and after suffering a serious accident, the K-141 Kursk submarine sinks with 118 crew members on board. While the few sailors who are still alive barely manage to survive, their families push for accurate information and a British officer struggles to obtain from the Russian government a permit to attempt a rescue before it is late. But general incompetence are against all their efforts.
Kursk tells a harrowing real-life tragedy with competent craftsmanship but struggles to transcend its TV-movie-of-the-week feel. The plot is serviceable — balancing the trapped sailors with the political bureaucracy above — but the script leans heavily on familiar disaster-movie beats and offers little psychological depth beyond stock roles (devoted father, obstructive officials, heroic rescuers). Acting is solid across the board, with Matthias Schoenaerts and Colin Firth delivering credible performances, though neither is given material that truly challenges them. Cinematography is functional and occasionally effective in the claustrophobic submarine interiors, but uninspired topside. Novelty is low — the story has inherent historical weight, but the treatment is formulaic, echoing countless similar naval disaster dramas without a distinctive directorial voice from Thomas Vinterberg (a surprising underperformance given his usual boldness). The ending, while historically inevitable, lands with muted emotional impact because the film fails to build sufficient individual investment in its characters, making the tragedy feel more procedural than devastating.