Law’s intensity carries the audience every step of the way.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 12, 2022

Black Sea isn't so much a film as a yarn or a ripping tale; one of those classical adventure movies seemingly designed to be viewed on a lazy Sunday afternoon after a big lunch.

| Oct 27, 2021

Black Sea is a superbly crafted piece of film.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 7, 2021

Despite plenty of brilliantly understated tension from realistic scenarios and excellent acting, the pacing routinely trudges.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2020

A very effective thriller that allows itself not only to entertain, but also attack, elegantly, against the greed of the most powerful. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Apr 16, 2020

While not breaking new ground cinematically, ultimately this is a good yarn, a tense two hour potential catharsis.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2019

A likeable lead performance from Jude Law plus a handful of nervy twists and turns helps its claustrophobic narrative chug along to a finale of limited possibilities.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 18, 2019

There is more than enough in Black Sea to keep fans of action movies happy - so long as they don't expect it to go too deep.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 31, 2019

There's great beauty to the rusted wreck of a vessel and the film built around it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2019

Set any thriller inside a submarine, and it isn't long before the claustrophobia comes flooding in.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 15, 2018

A brutal thriller, and almost a horror film with fear itself a virus. There's a pared-down urgency and realness, even though this is a preposterous tale -- of WW2 Russian gold at the bottom of the Black Sea. With a terrific turn from Jude Law.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2018

I may have seen something like Black Sea a hundred times before, but the elements hold up, stitched this particular way. If every there was such a thing as submarine movie comfort food, it's this.

| Jun 5, 2017

It is a shame Kelly's narrative clunks and clangs along, because Jude Law is terrific as the salty Robinson.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 22, 2016

It's a tense and watchable tale but without any real surprises, and demands that you drown a little too much of your disbelief.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2016

Black Sea is an expertly crafted genre exercise.

| Dec 31, 2015

It's tense, blokey stuff toplined by an impressive performance from a formidably crew-cutted Jude Law affecting an impressive Aberdonian accent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 29, 2015

This is a case where the dangers of the ocean depths prove far less lethal than a screenwriter with a lack of imagination.

| Dec 8, 2015

Black Sea is a perfectly dutiful, professional piece of work, with several creditable performances, but it's the sort of movie that doesn't have quite enough of any one thing going for it that might eclipse its influences.

| Dec 7, 2015

Law, I must admit, holds his own, surprisingly, given that he has to command the respect of a bunch of really rough fellows. Konstantin Khabenskiy is very funny as Law's lead partner-in-crime.

| Nov 18, 2015

Cliches abound in this waterlogged post-Cold War thriller from director Kevin Macdonald.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 29, 2015