User Reviews

Spoiler Alert - Ending Revealed This film is full of suspense, but has several points that are very unrealistic.

1) It is very unrealistic that any drug would have a beneficial reaction to another toxin. It makes an interesting plot, but it's a very unrealistic scenario. Equavil, the fictional drug in question, is described to treat "reactive depression". Therefore the presumed effect it would have would be to increase anxiety, the reaction that the crew was already having to the toxin in the paint. That makes the story of Equavil neutralizing the toxin totally implausible.

2) The crew exited the submarine Montana North of the Arctic Circle, possibly even North of 70 degrees latitude. The water temperature at that latitude would be unbearably cold. The crew would not survive long enough for more helicopters to get to them, except those in the rafts. But as can be viewed in the film, most of the crew were not in rafts, but in the water.

3) What was the purpose of Capt. Allard Renslow jumping out of the helicopter into the water? He could not possibly help any of the crew in the water, once he was in the water himself, especially water as cold as it would be North of the Arctic Circle. Renslow jumping into the water had a dramatic effect to rejoin with Van Meer. Nevertheless, there was no way Renslow would be any benefit to Van Meer or any of the other crew in the water.

After shore leave, both officers and crew rejoin their submarine, ready to embark on a new mission. They do not know that part of the interior was repainted with a paint that releases dangerous fumes. Before long people start to quarrel, kvetch, blubber or forget. The forgetting part is especially problematic...

So what happens when those in charge of a heavily armed submarine start to lose it, not through any fault of their own but as a result of an environmental mishap ? "The Fifth Missile" examines this hair-raising scenario with considerable vim and gusto. Made during the Cold War, the movie works both as a thriller/action tale and as a warning about Mankind's self-destructive tendencies. The Cold War has come and gone, but the underlying threat of annihilation by nuclear weapons remains the same, tragically enough.

On the whole the premise of a state-of-the-art submarine turning into a hellhole of paranoid confusion is well executed. The acting is good, which causes the viewers to feel sympathy and pity for the men caught in so cruel a vice. However, it is strange that, within the confines of the submarine, only a minority of characters seem to suffer serious ill effects from the paint-related fumes. If the fumes were as dangerous as all that, wouldn't we have dozens of people vomiting every time they thought of food ? And wouldn't we have dozens of people walking around naked, yelling at cupboards or talking to their late aunt Edith ? That depression medicine functioning as an antidote is pretty convenient, too.

But it does not do to nitpick every movie into oblivion. "The Fifth Missile" is well worth a watch : it's a suspenseful movie that packs a powerful punch.