Crimson Tide

May 12, 1995. A submarine thriller opens in 2,400 theaters and becomes the summer's thinking-person's action movie. Crimson Tide pits Denzel Washington against Gene Hackman inside the USS Alabama, a nuclear ballistic missile sub on patrol in a world where the Soviet Union has collapsed but its arsenal has not. Tony Scott directed; Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer produced. The film cost about $53 million and returned $157.4 million worldwide.

The setup is simple and lethal. A Russian rebel faction has seized a nuclear installation and is threatening to launch. The Alabama gets a launch order, but the message is cut off mid-transmission. Captain Frank Ramsey (Hackman) believes the order is valid. His new executive officer, Ron Hunter (Washington), insists they need confirmation. What follows is a battle of wills that turns the chain of command into a live wire. The cast includes Viggo Mortensen, James Gandolfini, George Dzundza, and Matt Craven as officers forced to choose sides.

Quentin Tarantino did an uncredited rewrite of some dialogue, including the famous Silver Surfer exchange. Hans Zimmer's score, all pulsing synths and brass, became a template for action-thriller music. The film was the last Simpson and Bruckheimer made together before Simpson's death in January 1996. It remains a high point of the submarine genre and a masterclass in two-hander acting. [edit]

The Cold War is over. The world is not safe. In post-Soviet Russia, a breakaway faction of ultranationalist rebels has seized control of nuclear missile installations and is threatening to launch warheads unless demands are met. The United States Navy mobilizes its ballistic-missile submarine fleet as a deterrent, and the USS Alabama, a nuclear-powered Ohio-class boomer, is ordered to sea.

Aboard is a command crew defined by contrast. Captain Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman) is a grizzled, decorated veteran who has spent his entire career preparing for exactly this kind of confrontation. He believes in instinct, experience, and the unbroken chain of command. His new executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington), is a Harvard-educated officer who has never seen combat. A thinker who teaches military history, Hunter believes in deliberation, process, and questioning orders when the stakes are absolute. The two men respect each other's records but are temperamentally oil and water, and the film establishes that friction early, in small clashes over drills, discipline, and the way a warship should be run.

The crisis escalates when the Alabama receives a message ordering it to launch its nuclear missiles at the rebel-held installations. But the transmission is interrupted. A Russian submarine attacks the boat mid-reception, and when the message is reassembled, the critical final portion of the launch order is missing or garbled. Ramsey is convinced the order is authentic and complete enough to act on. Hunter insists that firing nuclear weapons without a fully verified order is unconscionable, and that they must re-establish communication with fleet command before launching. With the boat rigged for silent running, depth-charged by a hostile sub, and the clock ticking toward the moment the rebels will be able to fire, the two men's disagreement hardens into a constitutional crisis inside a steel tube: who commands the ship, and what happens when the captain and his executive officer each believe the other is about to end the world?

The film then becomes a tense, claustrophobic procedural of command. It is a battle of wills played out through the ship's officers, its crew, and the Navy's own protocols, as the men around Ramsey and Hunter are forced to choose sides. Supporting players include the boat's chief of the boat (George Dzundza), the weapons officer (Viggo Mortensen), the lieutenant who becomes a key ally (James Gandolfini), and a gallery of junior officers and enlisted men caught in the middle. Tony Scott keeps the pressure on with tight framing, saturated color, and a relentless sense of countdown, while Hans Zimmer's score drives the escalation.[edit]