Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Hello my friends and welcome to ‘Depth Charge’ which we here will affectionately call ‘Die Hard on a Sub’. In the role of John McClane we have Jason Gedrick as Doc, the subs medical officer who slept through the siege of this submarine which is probably why he wasn’t detected. We could ask ourselves why Doc was sleeping in the mess hall storage compartment as opposed to his own quarters, especially considering the sub was running on a skeleton crew and should’ve had plenty of available space, but we’re not going to ask that because that would be silly. Doc has the ability to kill people with his bare hands. Obviously Doc must be some kind of secretly trained SEAL, special ops kind of cat to have these kind of skills, but no, as it is explained to us later Doc was an ‘amateur fighter’. Apparently the best ‘amateur fighter’ that world has ever seen. I too was an ‘amateur fighter’ but when encountering a pair of highly trained murderous mercenaries with automatic weapons versus me and my khaki pants, I would die.

Playing the role of Hans Gruber will be Eric Roberts as Commander Edwards. Commander Edwards is one angry ass dude. He’s angry because he’s never got the opportunity to have his own command, he’s angry because he has to take these stupid pills all the time, and he’s angry because his government is run be weak lilly livered liberals. With this knowledge, standing in for Nakatomi Tower will be the prototype submarine the U.S.S. Montana and in the role of chairman Takagi will be William Allen Young as Captain Lewis. The Montana is a sub prototype which is faster than any sub in the fleet, is armed to teeth with enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planet earth and beyond, and has the unique ability to go ‘stealth’ thus evading sonar. Thus after a top secret training mission when the Montana receives a stranded boat signal requesting assistance and his C.O. tells him that they should render assistance, allowing people of unknown origin onto this ship carrying advanced technology and nuclear warheads… why did the Captain think that this was a good idea? Captain Lewis… worst navy captain of ALL-TIME

So these armed gunman take command of the vessel, kick stupid ass Captain Lewis and his crew off of the sub, turn over command to the demented Commander Edwards who is threatening to launch his warheads at D.C., unless President Barry Bostwick wires him One Billion Dollars. But somebody didn’t account for Doc. And Doc’s plucky African American sidekick seaman Piersall (Chris Warren Jr.). ‘Die hard’ had two plucky African American sidekicks so Piersall will be playing the complex role of an amalgam of the two.

Now Doc is in the business snapping necks and eating toast, and baby... he’s all out of toast. He’s also repeatedly telling Edwards and his evil henchmen to ‘get off his sub’ which they refuse to do. Ultimately I’m thinking this is to their detriment. Will Doc and his jive talking African American sidekick be able to take back the boat before Edwards unleashes hell on the world and start his new world order? Again, I don’t want to spoil it for you but…

‘Generic’ would probably be the best word to describe ‘Depth Charge’. This is the worst kind of movie to ‘review’ because quite honestly there just isn’t a lot to say. It moves fast enough to avoid boring you to tears but doesn’t move fast enough to excite in any kind of way. It is terribly derivative so chances are if you’ve seen an action movie in the last twenty years you’ve seen everything that ‘Depth Charge’ has to offer without actually having to watch ‘Depth Charge’. Jason Gedrick and Eric Roberts are about as veteran as veteran actors can get and each seemed to give it their all in their respective roles, but there’s only so much a man can do in a film as generic as this one turned out to be.

One thing that was cool about ‘Depth Charge’ is that it has allowed me to believe I can pilot a nuclear powered submarine. You see since I watch a lot of movies I’m used to seeing all these people with all these different jobs in the sub control room, but eventually this sub got down to just two people, with one of those people shouting orders to the other person to do sub stuff. Plus, and I don’t know how accurate this is since I’ve never been on a sub, but this sub had all kinds of nifty touch screens with really simple instruction on them. Need to dive to ‘periscope depth’? Why just slide your fingers across the screen until you reach ‘periscope depth’. Need to target Pyongyang North Korea with a nuke? Why just touch Pyongyang on your touch screen. Need to make that nuke self-destruct? Simply touch the ‘self-destruct’ touch screen. Running a multi-billion nuclear sub really isn’t much harder than operating an I-phone.

‘Depth Charge’ is inoffensive and completely forgettable derivative entertainment. Neither bad nor good, it is a movie that is perfectly suited to watching with your left eye while your right eye is firmly planted on your computer playing Sudoku.