Jude Law all at sea

Dir: Kevin Macdonald

With: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Karl Davies

Runtime: 115 minutes

IT takes a brave Londoner to try his tongue at a Scots accent. True to form, Jude Law??s attempt to sound like an Aberdonian in Kevin Macdonald??s submarine-set thriller is a strong contender for the Dick Van Dyke Medal for services to earplugs. But do not let that put you off dive, dive, diving into a solidly done tale that, while no Das Boot, is no disaster either.

Macdonald, the Glasgow-born helmer of Touching the Void, State of Play and The Last King of Scotland, deserves his own mention in dispatches for venturing into the heavily populated waters of submarine movies. With nowhere for characters to run, a submarine makes an ideal setting for a thriller. It is a sort of underwater spaceship, or a watertight cabin in the submerged woods. Audiences are primed and ready from the start. But that same familiarity, as seen from Ice Station Zebra to Crimson Tide and many a co-ordinate in between, makes it difficult for a director to pull off something truly startling.

Law plays Captain Robinson, ex-Navy and soon to be ex from his marine salvage job as well. Having given 11 years to the company, sacrificing his family life along the way by being away for long tours, Robinson is being made redundant and shoved out the door with a cheque that will barely see him through a few months. Heading to the pub, he finds he is not alone, with many a colleague also laid off and angry about it. Meet the boys from the deep stuff, keen for a job, any job.

Which is perhaps why they cobble together the idea of robbing Stalin??s gold. Meant as a loan to Hitler before their pact disintegrated, legend has it that the bullion is sitting in a sunken U-boat somewhere under the titular sea, just waiting for a handy group of unemployed marine salvage experts to scoop it up. For various convoluted reasons, the crew going on the job has to be half Russian. Maybe the thick as borscht accents were meant to distract the audience from Law??s Groundskeeper Willie impersonation.

To be charitable, which is probably the last thing Aberdonians will feel like being on hearing him, Law??s attempt to sound like he is from the North East is not the worst Scottish accent ever heard, and all things considered the star of Road to Perdition, The Talented Mr Ripley and Sherlock Holmes makes a decent fist of playing a working class skipper out to get rich or die trying. Gone are the pretty boy looks of his past; for Macdonald??s film, Law has beefed himself up in several senses. It is a a nice piece of counter-intuitive casting on the director??s part, and it pays off.

Other wise decisions include casting Scott McNairy (Monsters) as a suit sent by those financing the mission to keep an eye on things, and Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom, Starred Up) as a submariner with a hair trigger temper. Also making his mark is Bobby Schofield, playing a young Scouser who has never been on a sub, never been anywhere in fact.

Since the characters are going nowhere, Macdonald and writer Dennis Kelly (Utopia) have to keep the twist and turns coming to sustain the audience??s interest. For a fair while they do so successfully, but then the law of diminishing returns kicks in and the film starts to drag. Despite such a lot going on - quarrels over money, the Russian Navy overhead, the danger involved in getting the gold - Black Sea is curiously dull at times, much like, one imagines, a stint on a submarine. That might give Macdonald??s picture a certain air of verite, but it does not make for a thrill a minute experience.

There is enough here, though, to keep the picture steaming along, not least Law??s performance as he tries to keep the warring factions together and bag the gold. A job well done, from Macdonald most of all. And if Dan Castellaneta should ever want a break from voicing Groundskeeper Willie, he knows exactly who to call.