List of Best Submarine Movies of All Time
Submarines are essentially the movie set of thrillers: dim red lights on the bridge, reflective surfaces dripping with water. Above all, submarines are claustrophobic traps that will ratchet up the tension when things inevitably go wrong. It’s hard to imagine piloting a ship underwater without windows. The crews of submarine military adventures, especially WWII action films, drift blindly, caught up in a miracle of simulated engineering. The submarine’s ears are her eyes, with only the echoes of underwater sounds to light the way.
The stakes of submarine movies are, naturally, life and death. There will be no miraculous crash landings under the immense pressure of the ocean’s depths, so when a leak develops in the hull, even the most formidable enemies must band together. It’s a neat little metaphor for human society, so directors have been exploring these waters for almost as long as filmmaking has existed. Here are the 15 best submarine movies of all time.
15. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
How you react to 2004’s The Life Aquatic by Steve Zissou depends entirely on your tolerance for Wes Anderson’s fantasies. Audiences and critics considered it Anderson’s worst film, but for fans of the indie director, it’s not a bad way to spend two hours. The writer-director brings all his usual tricks: quick shots, wry wit, and his singular eye for vibrant period decor and symmetrical cinematography.
Bill Murray plays Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau-style environmentalist filmmaker, but more depressed. It’s the usual Anderson effect, but the sadness takes hold when a terrifying shark eats Zissou’s partner. This prompts the captain and his Wes vanguard crew, like Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe, to embark on a deep-sea revenge mission. It’s hard to say whether the ending with the animated giant shark is the most poetic part of the movie. It all feels like an abstract watercolor that the artist can’t stop painting. Still, in a good mood, all kinds of magic are available.
14. Below (2002)
It’s a little awkward to include a movie like 2002’s Below on a list of the best movies of all time, let alone a list of the 15 best. I’m not saying Below is better than classics like 1943’s Destination Tokyo, starring Cary Grant. But as you might imagine, the contemporary genre of WWII propaganda films is a bit dated. If you want an underwater thriller for movie night, the ghost plot of Below is much more palatable.
Bruce Greenwood stars as Lieutenant Price, the new captain of a WWII attack submarine who takes over command after the previous captain dies. Strange things happen when three mysterious survivors of the battle show up on board. Crew members disappear, cylinders begin to run on their own, and the ship seems to have a mind of its own. When we discover that Price is reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth, this forms circumstantial evidence of who is responsible for this underwater horror. The film is relatively short at 104 minutes, which should satisfy your average deep-sea ghost story needs.
13. Spheres (1998)
Technically, this underrated 1998 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bizarre tale of a close encounter is an underwater habitat film in the vein of The Abyss. There are some submarines in it, but more importantly, all the subgenre elements are here – a claustrophobic battle with the elements of the ocean and a serious drop in morale among the crew as the walls close in.
Dustin Hoffman plays Norman, a psychologist who accepts a secret mission to a deep-sea habitat only to discover a strange, possibly alien sphere buried inside a hollow spaceship. Samuel L. Jackson is excellent as the team’s resident mathematician, who is suspiciously accepting of himself and spends hours anxiously lying about reading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” another tale of underwater danger.
Critics hated this movie, especially the ending, but the idea is too interesting to ignore. Crichton was at the peak of his sci-fi writing career, and no one was better at incorporating popular science into an artistically plausible thriller plot. Liev Schreiber and Sharon Stone round out the cast, both of whom develop cabin fever when faced with their strange discoveries. Even with his super genius, Norman’s intuition as a psychiatrist can help unravel the mystery of the mysterious alien’s consciousness. So forget the haters; it will be pretty exciting if you plan to watch this sci-fi adventure knowing that it’s a B-movie with big-budget diving gear.
12. K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
K-19: The Widowmaker is inspired by real events in 1961 when one of Russia’s first nuclear missile submarines leaked deadly radioactive material and almost became an underwater Chornobyl or worse. The project, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, cost $100 million to make, and while it lost more than many other submarine movies combined, the director of Point Break and The Hurt Locker did manage to bring it all to the screen. It’s a movie that can’t be missed for its sheer size alone.
Harrison Ford plays a typically paranoid leader who pushes his team to their limits in this critically panned film. The actor himself wasn’t a fan of the film, joking on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, “What kind of movie name is this, ‘K-19’? That’s a stupid name! Why did they have to be like that?” The Russians?! Ford seemed to be playing with the idea. It’s only logical that if the studio wants to recoup its investment, it must make an American version of this story.
“K-19” does have flaws. It’s too long, and Ford looks like he came from Moscow through Los Angeles. The merit of “K-19” is that it’s a diorama of the Soviet Union’s disintegration. Ford’s fearsome leader could be a microcosm of Joseph Stalin. He’s a stubborn tyrant who rules by irrational mandates regardless of the reality within his submarine fiefdom. While the men on board sacrifice themselves to plug the radiation leak, the botched endeavor is a sinking ship.
11. Greyhound (2020)
Greyhound is, admittedly, only a semi-submarine movie, but it decisively tells the story of these underwater killers from the above-water side. Tom Hanks stars and wrote the screenplay, based on C.S. Forster’s 1955 novel “The Good Shepherd,” as Captain Claus, a narrator of the submarine. Krause, who commands a WWII Navy destroyer with the USS Greyhound, escorting a decoy Allied convoy. A supply plane makes a perilous flight across the Atlantic during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942.
When the German submarine “Wolfpack” taunts the American commander and begins hunting down the ships in his convoy, Krause (with a distinctly Germanic last name) and his eager crew engage the enemy in an action-packed snapshot of the longest continuous military operation of the war. The events in this film are not entirely authentic.
Events draw on various historical encounters during the six-year battle for Atlantic supremacy and are condensed into a thrilling 91 minutes. Krause Hanks refuses to eat meal after meal as the life-and-death maneuvers continue through sleepless days. The Hollywood icon who left an indelible mark on Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan doesn’t have the budget or stage of those brilliant projects, but Hanks is still the man you want at the helm when the fate of the free world hangs in the balance.
10. U-571 (2000)
U-571 has a very engaging plot, very loosely based on true events. A young Matthew McConaughey, with a great haircut and a tough Harvey Keitel, lead a group of sailors selected on a secret mission to steal an Enigma machine from a Nazi submarine. Germany used this device to encrypt its war messages in World War II, and capturing it could be game-changing. But when the crew is sunk by a submarine, they are forced to board the vessel to survive.
U-571 contains some of the best underwater action scenes of all time, but as exciting as it is, modern WWII submarine movies lack the chivalry of classics like Enemy Underwater. Hollywood’s previous humane attitude, even toward America’s enemies, has been replaced by a new intolerance: all Germans here are war criminals and truly hated.
This hostility may be closer to the truth than the rose-colored propaganda of Golden Age movies, but the romance has been replaced by excitement, explosions, and little else. The only German who stands out in the cast is a small-time serial saboteur who gets more opportunities than he deserves. Still, he’s not a well-developed character. U-571 is more brutal and violent than the film that inspired it. It is exceptionally funny but also more pessimistic.
9. Command (2018)
The 2018 film Command tells the true story of the Kursk submarine. The 2018 film Command tells the true story of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, which was stranded on the ocean floor in 2000 after a devastating explosion that destroyed half the submarine and killed most of the crew. The film’s plot escalates as the seas rise and the remaining men must save their lives while the Russian commander stubbornly refuses NATO’s help.
Despite its mid-budget, Command contains some of any submarine thriller’s most subtle and nuanced cinematography. Unlike many older titles only available in 16 x 9 format, Drive is presented on a full widescreen, as director Thomas Vinterberg intended. Ironically, the film’s only real flaw is its distracting aspect ratio, with mailboxes moving in and out at key moments.
Drive is a Western European production with a cast that includes Colin Firth. He’s also anti-Soviet. The Russian military is portrayed as a declining force with a leadership that would rather sacrifice soldiers than admit weakness. The film’s only flaw is placing the blame on a random admiral when many point squarely at Vladimir Putin. Regardless, by the time British and Norwegian rescuers are allowed to help (spoiler alert!), it’s too late for the 118 lives on board. If undersea cinema represents a microcosm of global society, this film argues that no one can survive without cooperation between East and West.
8. Black Sea (2014)
Black Sea is a solid submarine thriller with the flavor of a heist movie. Jude Law stars as a poor, divorced Navy veteran who’s fired from his job at a shipyard by an unnamed bureaucrat. His experience as a submarine mechanic is all but obsolete, so in desperation, he gathers a motley crew to go after the tantalizing specter of Nazi gold. What could go wrong?
Made in the shadow of the 2008 global financial crisis, this British thriller is full of class warfare subtext, as grumpy sailors scoff at the ship’s “bankers” who look more like the lowly salesmen who run the country. But don’t let the period details fool you; this is an underwater thriller from start to finish. When the excellent cast (including Hollywood’s favorite rebel, Ben Mendelsohn) discovers that their borrowed submarine is essentially a sealed boat with batteries, you know the survival plot is moving very fast. Law is a native Londoner, but he takes this little-known thriller from port to port, swapping his posh British accent for a raspy Scottish one—if he can get there.
7. The Call of the Wolf (2019)
Finally, we have a submarine movie whose protagonist is the sonar man—the guy who presses studio headphones to his ears and tries to distinguish between the song of whales and the echo of invisible propellers. This French-made Cold War thriller makes other submarine movies seem underwater by comparison.
Up-and-coming French film star François Civil stars as a young man with a gifted ear. Possessed of perfect talent, he can simply discern nearly any detail about a weapon or type of helmet by listening to it. As tensions between France and Russia dangerously escalate, he is selected for a mission aboard a nuclear submarine where he must use his extraordinary abilities to help save the world.
The Call of the Wolf opens with a quote from Aristotle: “There are three kinds of mankind: the living, the dead, and those who go to sea.” In this pre-Christian formulation, submarines are not hell; they are purgatory, an apt metaphor for what is required of our nuclear submarines. The logic of deterrence demands that they be trained beyond human nature and, if necessary, initiate the apocalypse. This Cold War logic was famously parodied in the film Dr. Strangelove. The Call of the Wolf demands that the sailors trapped in the underwater world somehow escape the twisted knot of nuclear logic and save us all.
6. Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)
In the 1958 film Run Silent Run Deep, Clark Gable and his mustache play Commander Richardson, a WWII submarine commander trapped behind a desk after being badly sunk by a Japanese destroyer. But when he gets another assignment, he turns into Ahab against Moby Dick and goes after the same ship seeking revenge. Mutiny rears its ugly head as his orders to his subordinates shift from strict to reckless, reminiscent of the revolt against Humphrey Bogart’s charmingly crazy captain in the 1954 film The Kane Mutiny.
If you’re hesitant to watch a black-and-white 1950s war movie with a cheesy orchestral score, let Run Silent, Run Deep break your prejudices. Half the footage you see in submarine movies was shot here. It’s also 93 minutes long, almost unfathomable in an era when bloated Hollywood epics seem eager to discover the human bladder’s ability to withstand pressure finally. The great Burt Lancaster plays the submarine’s loyal but somewhat rebellious first mate, while young Don Rickles has a blunt little role – which feels like a missed opportunity for some acerbic language. Overall, this is one of Hollywood’s best WWII submarine movies and one of Gable’s best films, and it still maintains cult status decades later.
5. Crimson Tide (1995)
This 1995 Cold War thriller, directed by Top Gun action director Tony Scott, stars Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman as rival officers on a Navy nuclear submarine. Hackman plays the captain, and Washington is his talented first officer. When a rogue Russian general’s rebellion threatens to start World War III, the two board a modern American submarine to stop him. Viggo Mortensen and James Gandolfini stand out in this film’s outstanding cast.
This mediocre Cold War blockbuster doesn’t try to outdo The Boot. Tony Scott looks a bit like Michael Bay but with a little more visual restraint. He shoots big action thrillers with a superb multi-camera verve that only his more famous brother Ridley Scott can match. Red Tide is the best submarine movie, and the action is fantastic. The nuclear war conspiracy is always a good device, but it’s just a way to escalate the psychological warfare between Hackman and Washington. These two gentlemen are at the peak of their power, and neither will waver even when the world’s fate hangs in the balance.
4. The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Tom Clancy’s novels about Jack Ryan have been made into two classic films: 1992’s Patriot Games and 1990’s The Hunt for Red October. The author’s story about Ryan is a wild fantasy of the ultra-efficiency of the Deep State. The CIA analyst’s nerdy approach to Cold War espionage makes it seem like the Soviets and Americans should be able to work it out over some black coffee and Danish pastries. In The Hunt for Red October, Ryan (Alec Baldwin), a PhD expert on Russia, has a special eye for Captain Marco Ramius, a Soviet submarine commander played by Sean Connery, who looks very dapper in a convincing wig.
While piloting a modern nuclear submarine, Ramius’ disappearance ignites the fury of both Americans and Soviets. Hidden underwater war machines will enable the Soviets to deliver a devastating first strike, but Ramius doesn’t believe in a worker’s paradise in Clancy’s optimistic Cold War world. He’s a Japan-loving sophisticate who wants to defect and live his golden years in Montana. All he has to do is evade marauding Russian submarines and convince the Americans that Ryan isn’t a rebellious lunatic. The film features all the natural underwater dangers with the added tension of a nuclear exchange.
3. The Abyss (1989)
The Abyss is essentially an underwater ambient film, similar to Barry Levinson’s Spheres. But James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi thriller features a submarine with windows and one of the best underwater chase scenes ever. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio play civilian divers hired by a mysterious U.S. government force to search for a missing nuclear submarine. Michael Bane plays a military man who suffers from severe cabin fever and collapses under the pressure of the ocean. That’s exciting enough, but Cameron adds one final scene in which an underwater team discovers something truly otherworldly in the unexplored depths.
Cameron got the idea for The Abyss at age 17, when he attended a lecture by the first diver about breathing liquid through his lungs—a detail that appears in the film. An engineer, Cameron, devised a technique to record underwater conversations directly onto tape. Overall, filming The Abyss nearly cost Cameron his life and was a nightmare for the actors, who spent much of the filming underwater, holding their breath, while the complex and over-budget production dragged on and on. Cameron may have been demanding, but his work speaks for itself. The Abyss remains one of the most innovative and daring films ever made.
2. The Enemy Below (1957)
Released in 1957, Enemy Below tells the story of a tit-for-tat naval battle between an American destroyer and a German submarine in the South Atlantic during World War II. Granite-chinned Robert Mitchum leads the American team. He’s a former “civilian captain” who joined the Navy after his cargo ship was torpedoed. His crew waits, stunned, but when he turns out to be a tactically resourceful warrior-poet, a game of cat and mouse begins.
The outstanding Kurd Jurgens plays Captain von Stolberg of the Nazi submarine Below, but he’s no lip-service fascist. Stolberg is an alcoholic WWI veteran who rolls his eyes when a young recruit salutes too enthusiastically. Casually hanging a wet towel over a sign that reads “Fuhrer,” he sighs, “The new Germany, it’s like a machine.” As he lies in bed with two drinks that taste like “oil and green mold,” he muses about the second drink: “This is a bad war. Its causes are twisted. Its purposes are dark.”
The script by Wendell Mayes (Anatomy of a Murder) is excellent. The gritty portrayal of these equally honorable and cunning conflicted leaders is classic Hollywood optimism about human nature. The Enemy Below is an inspiring ad designed to recruit courage on the high seas, but it’s also a good reminder that movies give you hope for a world in decline.
1. Das Boot (1981)
“The word fascism no longer means anything,” George Orwell wrote in 1946, “except that it means ‘something undesirable.’” It was a response to the linguistic inertia that divides the world into two types: Nazis and everyone else. “The Boot” is one of the best war movies ever made because of its humane portrayal of a third group of people: those caught up in history’s tragic tide.
Of the 40,000 men who went to sea aboard German submarines during World War II, 30,000 never returned. This is a haunting introduction to Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 submarine classic “Das Boot,” which received an excellent re-release in 1997. This director’s final cut has better sound and image but doesn’t skimp on length. It’s still three and a half hours of angst, but that’s nothing compared to the nearly five-hour version made for German television.
In fraternity films, a group of men embark on a mission, almost always including a brief interlude where the heroes camp out, build a campfire, and share a meal. Much of “Das Boot” is exactly that. As the saying goes, “War is one long period of tedium punctuated by moments of pure terror.” No submarine movie can keep you so addicted to the rhythm of a frenetic crew creating fear yet breaking up the boredom with shocks and terror. Fighting on a damaged submarine is not an experience most people can share, but according to experts, this famous movie is the best simulation ever.
