What’s Aged the Best?
Sub-descent montage; Denzel's lines; real-time final hour; Jason Robards cameo; EAMs; opening and closing title cards
In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:15Read transcript
- Tony Scott makes a two-minute montage of the sub slowly descending riveting with Hans Zimmer's score; only Spielberg or McTiernan, who made Hunt for Red October, might have pulled it off.
- Denzel's line 'in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself' is one of about seven such Denzel lines.
- Viggo lights a cigarette when he decides to refuse the launch, and many sailors smoke Marlboro Reds underwater with no smoking section.
- George Dzundza's IMDb highlights include The Deer Hunter, No Way Out, Basic Instinct and Law & Order; a lowlight is co-leading the 1985 TV movie The Rape of Richard Beck with Richard Crenna.
- The Richard Beck plot summary is read, a 35th-anniversary episode is joked about, and early-80s cocaine is blamed for bad decisions.
- The last 60 minutes play basically in real time, with Weps doing the clock; it may have inspired Snake Eyes.
- Jason Robards, uncredited, comes flying in off the top rope for about 90 seconds.
- The EAMs are cinematically great, with messages three people must read aloud and confirm and run down the hallway; it is also disturbing that nuclear war hinged on them.
- The opening title card names the three most powerful people in the world, including a nuclear submarine captain, and the closing card says captains lost launch authority on January 1, 1996; Bruckheimer pitches the card almost word for word in a featurette.
- Don Simpson is joked to be number four; David Stern would belong in the top three.