Black Water

Jasmine Waltz

Cassie Taylor

Messrs. Van Damme and Lundgren reunite just one time too many for this terrible underwater thriller. The former ("Wheeler") finds himself on a submarine where a rogue CIA operative "Rhodes" (Al Sapienza) and his team are bent on gunning him down after he was framed. Fortunately he has the help of trainee agent "Cass" (Jasmine Waltz) and, latterly (and briefly) that of his erstwhile buddy "Marco" (Lundgren) who has an axe or two of his own to grind. What now ensues is just poor. No other word for it. Submarines are highly pressurised tin cans that don't react well - as Sir Sean Connery told us in "Hunt for Red October" (almost thirty years earlier) - to bullets. This one has to deal with machine guns and explosions galore before the completely unsecured bridge becomes the focus for a conclusion that couldn't come quickly enough for me. There is just nothing at all memorable about this; the talent are universally lacklustre and the plot just lurches from silly to daft to "really"? Van Damme does have charisma, but it's fading fast and he cannot hold this together en seul - it's just weak and derivative and not 1¾ hours of your life that you will never get back.