HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Robert J. Maxwell When Egyptian culture was at its height, hieroglyphics included a pictograph of the palm of a hand, fingers outstretched. As Egypt declined over the course of a thousand years, the glyph of the hand grew sloppier and sloppier until it became nothing more than a triangle on its side. This process of repetition, aging, and carelessness is known as decadence. Not to worry about the hand-turned-triangle though. The Phoenicians picked it up and turned it into the letter "D" in our alphabet.No such luck with the disaster-movie genre. It just got more repetitive, aged, and sloppy until it finally died except for a few horrid gasps during agonal respiration, of which this is an example.It's not worth going on about, really. The plot is full of holes, beginning with the first few minutes, when a cargo ship whose radar is on the blink in a great fog decides to stay on course and speed anyway. No warning toots of the whistles or anything. Chuck Heston is the captain of a surfaced nuclear submarine returning to New London. His radar has picked up the approaching ship but he decides to plow ahead anyway, or maybe he changes course, the plot is as murky on this point as the all-encompassing fog. What's the distance of the target?, asks Heston. One thousand yards. Then -- BLAM -- it's on top of them and cutting the aft end of the boat off. Those thousand yards take about ten seconds to cover. That's one hundred yards per second, if my pocket calculator isn't lying again.The characterizations are disjointed. Ronnie Cox is the Executive Officer who suddenly, and without adumbration, begins to skin Heston alive for being a pompous show off. Then the outburst is forgotten and dropped. I don't know why the scene is in there unless it's that the writers figured that every movie about a submarine in distress must have a crew member who goes berserk.The script gives no hint of Navy protocol. An anonymous seaman hails Heston as he's about to climb a ladder. "Hey, Captain, when are we going to get out of here?" Just like that -- "Hey, Captain." The special effects are poor, usually so dark that it's hard to see what's actually going on. And I don't think there's an unpredictable moment in the movie. We know well ahead of time that SOMEBODY is going to have to die to save the others. In fact, we get two helpings of that.The acting from the principals is all right. Heston ought to know how to be authoritative by now. And he's given some finely textured performances, even when he's not wearing robes and sandals, as he did in "Will Penny." But he's not really given anything to do because of the multitude of supporting players, and some of them are positively embarrassing.I hate to say it because I like Heston, a good actor and a man of principle, even if I disagree with some of his later principles. But the truth is, this isn't a very good movie.

jtwcosmos "Secure that door!"This is the story of Nautilus, the nuclear submarine that sank with all hands, but some of them got rescued. No submarines were harmed during the making of this movie, even though the script is quite bad and the special effects were done in a bathtub. The cast is great and it is just about the only grace saving this picture.The story and it's translation into script require the viewer to believe that the highly trained officers of the Navy are idiots. Which could be, but I highly doubt it, especially when we're talking about the flagship of the submarine fleet. Then again, stupid accidents happen all the time, and it could be possible that a ship the size of Manhattan would sucker punch a sub, once in a while. After that it gets better, especially towards the end, when the tension is well done.The special effects are terrible, but they seem to improve during the movie. Or I just got used to them, not sure. If you can look past the flimsy models and their less than impressive screen presence, however, they do their job and tell a decent story.The cast is great. Charlton Heston, Stacy Keach, Ronny Cox, David Caradine and Christopher Reeve are excellent.Gray Lady Down. A decent sub movie, with terrible special effects. 5/10.

shinsrevenge For a movie with Charlton Heston, it is unusual bad. The camera work is an imposition. Many of the "underwater" scenes (like the falling rocks) are actually made ashore and you can see that way to obvious. Special effects are cheap. The plot is unreliable. Whenever the "DSRV" connected to the submarine and they opened the hatch, there wasn't even one drop of water coming down. The story is unnecessarily stretched to the point it hurts. At least in the last half hour it gets a bit better. The overall acting sways between weak and average. It's the first movie I had to give a bad rating and it was a disappointment.I normally enjoy movies with Charlton Heston. In this one it was really hard to just sit about one and a half hours and watch it till the end. But you can't judge a movie when you haven't seen it all.My suggestion is: skip this one.

alicorna If you've seen any 70s "disaster flick", you'll know pretty much what to expect in this one: stiff acting, bad special effects, a tense, strained plot with people in charge who make decisions that put other people's lives at risk, pretty much every cliche you've come to expect (and maybe love).About the most remarkable thing about this film is the cast, which is a pretty impressive lineup. Why the acting is so stiff, I can't say, unless it's the constrictive script and unoriginal dirction (the editing is mediocre, as well).All in all, this is a pretty average film. Not horrible, not great. It might be worth watching if you particularly enjoy 70s disaster flicks or you can't be bothered to change the channel when it comes on late at night.