In sports and the military, \u201cprofessionalism\u201d describes people who go about their work with a calm, dispassionate efficiency \u2014 no fuss, no panic when things go wrong, few mistakes, little attention paid to the odds, the chance for glory.<\/p>\n
You can apply that word to movie actors, too. The great cast of character actors of \u201cPhantom,\u201d a solid Cold War-era submarine thriller of modest ambitions, never reveals that this isn\u2019t \u201cThe Hunt for Red October\u201d or \u201cK-19: The Widowmaker.\u201d Ed Harris, William Fichtner and David Duchovny show up, hit their marks, give their lines some punch and play the heck out of this B-picture, which could easily have been just a prop (a submarine) in search of a movie.<\/p>\n
Writer-director Todd Robinson (he scripted \u201cWhite Squall\u201d) has cooked up an alternative bit of Cold War mythology. In 1968, a tense time when U.S. and Soviet subs were tangling and occasionally sinking, a Soviet sub went missing. Here\u2019s a far-fetched explanation.<\/p>\n
Harris plays the retiring Soviet captain taking the B-67 out to sea on one last cruise before they sell her to the Chinese and put him out to pasture. She\u2019s a \u201csmoker,\u201d an aged diesel sub in an age of \u201catom smasher\u201d powered boats. He\u2019s the son of a hero of the service, and is haunted by his past.<\/p>\n
Does he believe in omens? His hastily assembled crew drops stuff while they\u2019re frantically loading the boat. Things break. Oh, and his commanding officer (Lance Henriksen, another old pro) shoots himself as the B-67 clears the harbor.<\/p>\n
On board is a nuclear-armed missile, some sort of experimental gadget and a couple of heavy-handed security guys, led by Bruni (David Duchovny) to supervise the testing of it.<\/p>\n
William Fichtner is the loyal second in command. Johnathon Schaech re-invents himself as a conflicted political officer.<\/p>\n
Nobody feigns an accent. Nobody calls anybody else \u201ccomrade.\u201d They just go about the business of putting an aged, crowded killing machine through its paces en route to the Pacific, where nerves, loyalties and history will be put to the test.<\/p>\n
Characters spend much of the movie explaining submarine tactics to the \u201cguests\u201d on board, who apparently have never seen a submarine movie. (\u201cSound is the enemy of a submarine.\u201d)<\/p>\n
They diagram Kremlin politics and conspiracy theories, and gripe about the Americans \u2014 always trailing them, always on watch, \u201cwith their snouts in the trough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson manages some suspense, but the thriller\u2019s ticking clock is a weak one. He\u2019s sloppy at solving script problems, giving a character in the submarine claustrophobia (!?) so that another character must handle a difficult task.<\/p>\n
But the cast never lets on that this alternative history (think Glomar Explorer) isn\u2019t the most dazzling riff on the Soviet-era \u201cSilent Service.\u201d Captain to boson, Harris to Henriksen, this Hollywood crew is too professional for that.