Black Water is a 2018 action thriller about a deep cover operative who awakens to find himself imprisoned in a CIA black site on a submarine.
There’s certainly a thing going for nostalgia, and I’m all for some of the old gang getting together for one last hoorah, but every once in awhile, these trips down memory lane feel less like a look back than a step back. Such is the case for Pasha Patriki‘s latest action flick Black Water, a film that brings together once again the combined presence of two very charismatic stars in a film that spends much more time with one of them than the other, ending up a generic potboiler that misses the most of its opportunities to be something much more significant.
Waking up in the near dark, CIA agent Wheeler (Jean-Claude Van Damme) finds himself locked up in a unique cell, one deep underground, er rather, underwater. He’s told by the guy in the next stall, a snarky fellow named Marco (Dolph Lundgren), that he’s on a submarine, and there’s no getting out. Wheeler just lost his partner and lover, young Melissa (Courtney B Turk), killed in a gun fight trying to keep a top secret dongle that is connected with a separate USB containing some highly-sensitive information. Now, at the bottom of the ocean, in a repurposed blacksite submarine, Wheeler goes mano-a-mano with Agent Rhodes (Al Sapienza) and his goons, who are looking to sell the information to terrorists, Wheeler joining forces with young Agent Taylor (Jasmine Waltz) who is trying to understand where her loyalties lie.
Beginning with a well-worn setup of a person walking into a room where someone unexpected is already waiting and seems to have the drop, only to find out that the two are actually a couple and this is some sort of game, Black Water then dips into even more familiar territory with a massive firefight in broad daylight that draws no police response and a miracle or two for Wheeler who somehow comes up unscathed. Whatever. This is an action movie with a very specific purpose, and while the first ten or so minutes sets up a kind of kinetic B-grade shooter on the run, we quickly end up in the tight confines of a submarine where interrogations and threats of torture as the hunt for the hidden dongle has made men of power very jumpy.
It’s actually here where the movie finds firmer ground, despite being underwater. Van Damme, who has long made goofy action scripts far more fun than they should be, is endlessly watchable, aging well into more subtler roles like this, still handling the beat ’em ups with a certain flair that works. He looks worn and weary and it helps a lot in giving a character like Wheeler a bit of authenticity, even as he manages to kick a long series of bad guy butt.
It’s just too bad that the film couldn’t double that fun with more Lundgren, who is all but absent for the story save for a bit of early exposition and a few catchy one-liner comeback until he shows up at the end. What a loss, pairing these two classics up and then separating them for nearly the entire show. Instead, the movie puts its weight on a testy partnership with Taylor, who is undeniably fit and formidable but no match for the potential of a team up with Van Damme and Lundgren.
Running at an hour and forty-five minutes, the film is a little too hefty for it’s own good, padded with overlong gunfights and flat bits of character development. What’s more strange is how we never once feel as if we’re actually on submarine, the dank spacious set looking more like the bowls of a steam and fire factory. Van Damme fans, of whom I am one, will take some notable pleasure in a few sterling Van Damme moments, but otherwise, Black Water is nothing more than a serviceable thriller.