Metacritic reviews

Impressive and heartfelt.

(Director Bigelow) piles up one nerve-racking crisis after another, interspersed with moments of ethereal, almost otherworldly beauty.

There is one surprise in the movie, a decision having nothing to do with the reactor, that depends entirely on the ability of the characters to act convincingly under enormous pressure; casting stars of roughly equal weight helps it to work.

The movie gradually works its way, with quiet intelligence and apparent conviction, until there's no turning from it. An hour in, and we're on that boat.

Bigelow gives this film edge, tension and something you aren't expecting: a woman's touch for teasing out the buried emotion beneath those stoic surfaces.

As square-shouldered as you'd expect of a National Geographic co-production. But Bigelow hits all her marks and more within the narrow parameters.

Despite its exciting moments, the film is too long.

With uncommon ineptitude even by the standards of contemporary action flicks, Kyle's script submerges the inherently dramatic tale of the K-19 under a pile of clichés, while failing to tell you enough about the characters for their actions to make much sense.

Obediently follows the verities of the submarine movie and its true story origins but without the imagination needed to refresh the genre.

What's really needed is a story with some sizzle, but Bigelow, in K-19, can't seem to decide whether she's making a shoot-the-works underwater rouser, like ''U-571'' or ''Crimson Tide,'' or a lofty historical message movie that hits us with the breaking news that the arms race was, in every sense, a poisonous game.