Phantom
Synopsis
Ed Harris plays the captain of a Cold War Soviet missile submarine who has recently been suffering from seizures that alter his perception of reality. Forced to leave his wife and daughter, he is rushed into a classified mission, where he is haunted by his past and challenged by a rogue KGB group (led by David Duchovny) bent on seizing control of the ship’s nuclear missile. With the fate of humanity in his hands, Harris discovers he has been chosen for this mission in the belief he would fail. PHANTOM is a suspense submarine thriller about extraordinary men facing impossible choices.
Dove Review
This movie could have been more than what it is. Ed Harris plays a burned out captain of a Soviet missile submarine during the Cold War and he is on his last command. The captain has occasions of hallucinations including those of dying men and of blood. And, to boot, a new sailor is on board and the official papers on him declare he died at sea in the past so hence the title of the movie. Are the men on the sub in danger of working on a haunted submarine with a phantom aboard?
However, the captain seems to be haunted by a few regrets more than anything and on top of this he has to deal with a KGB representative that has an agenda of his own. Despite a good performance by the steady Ed Harris, and a pretty good plot, the movie is marred by strong language and violence including a character’s throat being slit. For these reasons, we are unable to award it our Dove “Family-Approved” Seal.