In the sinking shadow of the Berlin Wall came a Cold War submarine movie with a Scottish accent. John McTiernan's follow up to DIE HARD introduced a nation of post-football  Thanksgiving Day audiences to Tom Clancy's US James Bond. The film reunites McTiernan with legendary action movie cinematographer/director Jan de Bont and the pair use a dogeared vacation house paperback as inspiration for crafting some of the longest running visual motifs in war movies. Little is underutilized in the frame as the film alternates between wide shots, close-ups, and levels of focal distance that are dynamic and never disorienting. Curry's traditional menace is more subdued in Dr. Petrov. His is a threat of by-the-book pedantry rather than outright villainy, making for a welcome counterpoint to the film's white-knuckle nuclear war tension. Is there a submarine construction sequence with a curtain of sparks wreathing the hulking vessel? You better believe there is. -- Andy Helmkamp