Crew
Director – Nikolai Lebedev, Screenplay – Nikolai Lebedev & Aleksey Sidorov, Producers – Ruben Dishdishyan, Nikita Mikhalkov, Leonid Vereshchagin & Anton Zlatopolsky, Photography – Sergey Machilsky, Music – Artyom Vasiliev, Visual Effects Supervisor – Konstantin Yarosh. Production Company – Central Partnership Productions/Russia 1/TriTe/Cinema Fund.
Cast
Alexander Petrov (Captain Viktor Voronin), Aleksei Guskov (Rear Admiral Olshansky), Diana Pozharskaya (Julia Brown), Anton Rival (Oskar), Oleg Gaas (Ipatov), Viktor Dobronravov (Captain Alexander Voronin)
Plot
The Russian nuclear submarine Ataman Yermak is attacked and goes down under the Greenland icepack. On top of the icepack is a Swedish scientific research team headed by the half-Russian Julia Brown. Giant tentacles erupt from beneath the ice and their camp is dragged down. Only Julia and her colleague Oskar are able to escape. Viktor Voronin, brother of the captain of the Ataman Yermak, is placed in command of the Zapolyarye and despatched on a rescue mission. Rear Admiral Olshansky is sent to accompany him as back-up. They rescue Julia and Oskar but doing so pits Viktor against the hardline Olskansky who disapproves of nearly every command decision he makes. As they descend deeper, they face a giant kraken emerged from the depths.
There has been quite a body of submarine dramas, usually works that take place during wartime – see the like of Run Silent Run Deep (1956), The Enemy Below (1957), Gray Lady Down (1978) and Das Boot (1981), among others. There has been the occasional genre variant such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), The Neptune Factor: An Undersea Odyssey (1972), plus tv series such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-8), Stingray (1964-5) and seaQuest DSV (1993-6). You can also include here standard submarine dramas that contain borderline SF elements such as The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Crimson Tide (1995). Amid these, there has been the odd effort that adds monster to the mix such as The Atomic Submarine (1959), Atragon (1963), The Rift (1990), Octopus (2000) and Gods of the Deep (2023).
Kraken is a surprisingly good as a submarine drama. It has been directed with a slick dramatic polish that goes through the various dramas and tensions with more than reasonable effectiveness. I was quite surprised how well some of the tensions are handled – from the fire on board, the collapsing of the downed submarine as they race to get everybody out, and the venture into the flooding launch tubes. The tensions that come during the rescue and attempt to escape are top notch. A decent budget has been thrown at the film, particularly when it comes to effects, leading to some fine set-pieces with the submarine navigating the narrow contours of the ice pack, being bumped by whales and particularly the submersible journey down into the kraken’s lair filled with the wrecks of previous ships.
The cast are all reasonable. Alexander Petrov is not the most charismatic lead – he remains rather impassive throughout, but what impresses is the way the character is written with virtue and right-headed instinct. He is smartly counterbalanced with old warhorse Aleksei Guskov who questions his every move. For once, the strength of characters carries the film.
The Russian Kraken should not be confused with the Norwegian-made Kraken (2026), which came out nine months later.
Kraken was the tenth feature film for Russian director Nikolai Lebedev. In genre material, Lebedev has also directed the horror film The Source of Snakes (1997), the serial killer film Poklonnik (2001), the English-language thriller The Iris Effect (2005) and the fantasy film Wolfhound (2006).
Trailer here