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Sketchy Russians, plot holes sink submarine thriller 'Black Sea'

After skillfully navigating through an ocean of claustrophobic suspense, Kevin Macdonald's submarine thriller "Black Sea" runs out of narrative fuel, coming to a full stop before the complete story has been told.

The last shot we see involves people, an ocean and a nagging question.

Then what happens?

Nothing.

The end credits roll and "Black Sea," written by British writer Dennis Kelly, abandons us in our hour of need to know what happens next.

Up to this point, Macdonald makes the most of Kelly's sparse screenplay, firing up a taut tale of greed, murder, conspiracy and duplicity against a rising tide of implausible actions and head-stratching plot holes.

"Black Sea" wastes no time in setting up its premise.

After 30 years of employment with an underwater salvage company, an angry man named Robinson (Jude Law, scowling through a struggling beard and effecting a respectable Scottish accent) gets pink-slipped just before finding out about a sunken Nazi U-boat reportedly carrying a fortune in Soviet gold. A mysterious financier agrees to fund a risky mission to recover the booty from the sea just outside of Turkey, in exchange for 40 percent of the take.

Robinson assembles a team of unkempt and grumbly British and Russian crew members who look and act like the anti-"Ocean's 11."

These include a dutiful Russian translator Morosov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a dimwitted teenager Tobin (Bobby Schofield), a skeezebag American Daniels (Scoot McNairy) and a knife-wielding Australian psychopath named Frasier (Ben Mendelsohn).

Wait. Exactly who invited a knife-wielding Australian psychopath aboard the tight quarters of a submarine on an illegal mission?

Robinson did. Frasier's "an expert diver," so that apparently makes it OK.

The scraggly crew sets sail in a rust-bucket of a submarine that looks as if someone bought it on Craig's list under Cheap Nautical Gear for Modern-Day Pirates.

Once underway, "Black Sea" picks up momentum as Macdonald slowly ratchets up the tensions building between the Brits and the Russians.

Some of them don't like Robinson's egalitarian terms of equal shares for all. Some people deserve more than others, they think.

It doesn't take long for the unsavory mates to figure out that the fewer the crew members, the more booty for the remaining survivors.

Like George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," "Black Sea" adopts a bleak view of humanity's ability to work well together in tight quarters for the benefit of all. Greed and personality conflicts continuously threaten what already appears to be a doomed endeavor.

Even though Law cuts a convincing portrait of a working-class victim fighting back against "the man" and other forces of injustice, his character is mostly relegated to keeping peace between the crew members and lapsing into flashbacks of happier times with his wife and young son - a superficial attempt to give Robinson emotional depth.

We don't truly know this skipper, so when crew members accuse him of letting gold fever compromise his sanity, we have no way to tell if they're right.

Macdonald does a reasonably good job of personalizing the British crew members, not so much the Russians, who resemble sketchy renegades from a bad 1960s Cold War submarine drama.

Nick Palmer's extraordinary production design of the sub interior resonates with Cold War vibes, and Christopher Ross' sharply lighted camerawork suggests the suffocating enclosures of the crew's cramped living quarters.

"Black Sea" may not be up to the standards of Wolfgang Petersen's "Das Boot" or John McTiernan's "The Hunt for Red October," but Macdonald's drama generates some intense, pressurized moments under the sea.

What else would anyone expect when there's a knife-wielding Australian psychopath aboard?

“Black Sea”

★ ★ ½

Starring: Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Tobias Menzies

Directed by: Kevin Macdonald

Other: A Focus Features release. Rated R for language, violence. 115 minutes

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