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Still, the film has enough spooky momentum and good actors to keep it going. Greenwood (John F. Kennedy in "13 Days") is well-cast as the square-jawed officer with the jangly, intense eyes. He's an authority figure waiting to be corrupted -- by himself as much as anything else.
Bruce Greenwood, following up his fine-tuned performance as John F. Kennedy in "Thirteen Days," plays Lt. Brice, acting submarine commander since his captain's mysterious death.
...the actors are quite good (particularly Bruce Greenwood as the steely-eyed, ambiguous captain)...
Bruce Greenwood, who played John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, looks like Kennedy in his Navy uniform and makes a fine, conflicted commanding officer.
Bruce Greenwood (Thirteen Days, Double Jeopardy) offers his usual deft performance as Lt. Brice, who has taken command of the sub after the captain was killed in a mysterious accident.
Though it probably won't help at the box office, the movie benefits from a realistic no-name cast, including Olivia Williams ("Rushmore") and Bruce Greenwood, so effective as JFK in "Thirteen Days."
And despite Bruce Greenwood's haunting performance as the ship's tension wracked skipper, the secrets he and other crew members keep aren't allegorically strong enough to get past Below's penny dreadful plotting and cheap scares.
The camera looks through a periscope at Greenwood's blue eye and finds the object of his vision -- a huge battleship -- reflected....Greenwood, summoning the moral rectitude with which he played JFK in "Thirteen Days," clenches his jaw and conjures Robert Stack.
The rising stress onboard the submarine is brought vividly to the surface in terrifically agitated performances by Williams ("The Sixth Sense"), Bruce Greenwood (Thirteen Days") as the captain who is trying to maintain his crew's grip on reality,
Greenwood excellently shows a commander who's slowly losing his grip on reality as he struggles to maintain control of his crew, and yet tries to put a brave face on for his new guests that he's rescued.
Lieutenant Brice's (the terrifically sly Bruce Greenwood: Thirteen Days) hold on command gets shaky after the Shark picks up survivors from a British hospital ship, including nurse Claire (sure and steely Olivia Williams: The Sixth Sense
Stern Lieutenant Brice (Bruce Greenwood) thinks his biggest problem will be the presence of a comely nurse (Olivia Williams), to say nothing of the Germans........while Greenwood and Williams have old-Hollywood charisma that enriches a surprisingly unnerving production that shouldn’t be allowed to slip beneath the radar.
The best performance comes from Bruce Greenwood, an actor whose name you might not immediately recognize unless you saw his mind-blowing transformation into John F. Kennedy for the Kevin Costner film Thirteen Days. Greenwood reminds me of Kevin Spacey circa 1994, a dependable supporting actor that everyone has seen in a movie somewhere but few would be able to recognize on the street. Greenwood, like Spacey, has unlimited talent that is just waiting to find the right roles, and just recently they seem to have started coming his way. His turn here as the dictatorial Lt. Brice succeeds on multiple levels - you hate him, you feel sorry for him, you're scared of him - and it takes a lot more than just barking out orders and looking through a periscope for an actor to achieve all that. He worked hard on this movie, and it shows.
Then again, Bruce Greenwood -- the superb JFK of ''Thirteen Days'' -- is just the actor to assume command in an atmosphere of tense uncertainty. As the lieutenant who takes over after the suspicious death of the boat's captain, Greenwood sometimes holds the crew's panic at bay just by the intensity of his eyes. As with much of ''Below,'' his performance is an above-average pleasure.
Bruce Greenwood (who played JFK in "13 Days") delivers a strong performance as a square-jawed skipper ordered to rescue a handful of survivors from a sunken British medical cruiser.
Commanding the submarine is Lieutenant Brice (the highly capable Bruce Greenwood), who assumed the helm when the original captain died under mysterious circumstances.
Bruce Greenwood (so excellent as JFK in the grossly underseen 13 Days) stars as Brice, the man piloting the submarine who picks up a few survivors from a sunken ship. Is he the Captain of the ship? Kind of.............Greenwood's always good, and here he does a good job of anchoring the film and showing a nice array of facets.
"13 Days" star Bruce Greenwood does a respectable job in playing the sub’s commander. But the film is saddled with too much ambiguity and despite the superb acting "Below" ends up in murky water.
While on North Atlantic patrol in August 1943, the USS Tiger Shark, under acting commander Lt. Brice (Bruce Greenwood), picks up three survivors of a sunken hospital ship. Two -- nurse Claire Paige (Olivia Williams) and seaman Kingsley (Dexter Fletcher) -- are British, while the third is shot by Brice when his German identity is revealed.........
Even she and the always-watchable Greenwood can’t keep things afloat during the painfully silly showdown finale...
Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams and Scott Foley give wicked performances as the final lot left to deal with the mysterious mess, doing their part to keep this sucker at "see" level.
Below
ReviewsWhat the critics have to say
about Bruce Greenwood in Below
collected by Ingrid Deiwiks, June Koizumi,
Pamela McKay, Ann Orr and Anna Wirz
Bruce Greenwood is commanding as the lieutenant who takes over after the suspicious death of the boat's captain.
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly 10/25/02
Chilling, with a glittering, snakelike gaze, Greenwood's Brice manages to cover his slowly unraveling psyche with a capable-officer façade like a lid on a pressure cooker-- until the lid blows off completely. His performance is vaguely reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's in The Shining in that somewhere beneath the escalating madness there's a sense of reason that sometimes peeks out, like a face behind a mask, to let us know he hasn't gone completely over the deep end (no pun intended).
Stacie Hougland, hollywood.com 10/11/02
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution 1./18/02
Robert Elder Chicago Tribune 10/18/02
Staci Layne Wilson, Fantastica Daily
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinal
Bill Muller Arizona Republic 10/18/02
John Monaghan
Detroit Free Press 10/18/02
Jeremiah Kipp Matinee Magazine
Edward Guthman, SF Chronicle 10/18/02
Rob Blackwelder, Spliced Wire
Mike Szymanski, Zap2it
MaryAnn Johanson Flick Filosopher
Dan Fienberg LA Weekly 10/18/02
Larry Carroll,
Countingdown.com
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly 10/10/02
Anthony Breznican, AP 10/09/02
David Kehr,
New York Times 10/1/02
Nick Nunziata, CHUD 10/07/02
Tony Toscano, Talking Pictures
...Having played a convincing JFK in "Thirteen Days," Greenwood here more resembles Cliff Robertson portraying the future president in "PT 109."
Todd McCarthy, Daily Variety 10/7/02
Michael Tunison, Cinescape 10/02
e-online 10/11/02