All-American Harrison accents Russian heroics

July 17, 2002
USA Today
by Jeannie Williams

NEW YORK — Harrison Ford plays a commander of a nuclear-missile submarine. His steely eye is on the mission's success. In the crunch, he learns from his men and feels for them. It's the tough-but-vulnerable Ford whom audiences have flocked to see since he took off in Star Wars almost 25 years ago. But wait: The global all-American hero, once U.S. president on screen, has a slight Russian accent this time around. His Cold War enemy is the United States. He and all the heroes of K-19: The Widowmaker, based on a true story, are Russian.

Ford is not a man for sighing, but he sounds as if he'd like to when he talks about this thriller, opening Friday. "People come to a film with such expectations. Let's disabuse them of their expectations early on. This is not a typical Harrison Ford movie. It's told from a Russian point of view. It's an ensemble piece, not a star-vehicle-type picture."

Ford plays the captain of a new but ill-prepared sub sent from Moscow to the Arctic in 1961 to test its missiles. He faces off with Liam Neeson, the commander whom he replaces. Ford is demanding, while Neeson treats the crew like a family. "It's a character not easily identified with or understood at first," Ford says. "But it's critical to the dramatic construction that that be the case. It's a very different kind of film."

Kathryn Bigelow directs this tense drama about the crew's battle to cool the sub's overheating reactor. If they fail, a nuclear explosion has the potential to ignite a war between the world's superpowers, as well as threaten the crew's own lives. Ford's commander wants desperately to solve the problem without the shame of calling for aid from a nearby U.S. destroyer and thereby giving up nuclear secrets.

It's virtually an all-male movie, the kind that you might envision coming from a director such as Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down). Ford says Bigelow "was extremely well-prepared and collaborative," though he admits to a bit of "wrestling to the ground" on some issues. Ford can wrestle because of his clout and the fact that he is a K-19 producer.

Bigelow doesn't think fans will have trouble accepting Ford's Russian accent: "It's a slight coloration. It helps to unify a cast from all corners of the world."

Death by radiation poisoning was the reward for the sailors who went in to jerry-rig repairs to cool the reactor. The Soviet government provided only chemical suits, not radiation gear, and as Neeson's character says, they might as well have been wearing raincoats. But they had done their duty for the motherland.

Ford was intrigued by their "selfless and heroic behavior. Maybe this will help ... inform people about sacrifice," a word heard more since Sept. 11

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