After shore leave, both officers and crew rejoin their submarine, ready to embark on a new mission. They do not know that part of the interior was repainted with a paint that releases dangerous fumes. Before long people start to quarrel, kvetch, blubber or forget. The forgetting part is especially problematic...
So what happens when those in charge of a heavily armed submarine start to lose it, not through any fault of their own but as a result of an environmental mishap ? "The Fifth Missile" examines this hair-raising scenario with considerable vim and gusto. Made during the Cold War, the movie works both as a thriller/action tale and as a warning about Mankind's self-destructive tendencies. The Cold War has come and gone, but the underlying threat of annihilation by nuclear weapons remains the same, tragically enough.
On the whole the premise of a state-of-the-art submarine turning into a hellhole of paranoid confusion is well executed. The acting is good, which causes the viewers to feel sympathy and pity for the men caught in so cruel a vice. However, it is strange that, within the confines of the submarine, only a minority of characters seem to suffer serious ill effects from the paint-related fumes. If the fumes were as dangerous as all that, wouldn't we have dozens of people vomiting every time they thought of food ? And wouldn't we have dozens of people walking around naked, yelling at cupboards or talking to their late aunt Edith ? That depression medicine functioning as an antidote is pretty convenient, too.
But it does not do to nitpick every movie into oblivion. "The Fifth Missile" is well worth a watch : it's a suspenseful movie that packs a powerful punch.
0 out of 0 found this helpful