We know this is all entirely out of order, and the men in the control room watch the central pair out of the sides of their faces. His XO pads about after him, disagreeing quietly, asking him again and again to find out what the second message said, in full, first. So then the sub, parked somewhere deep just off Russia, receives an emergency action message telling it to launch its nuclear weapons – followed by a broken-off half-message that might countermand the first. 'We're here to preserve democracy, not to practice it.' By the time the big scene comes, you feel like you could pretty much run a nuclear sub, and you definitely know that the XO doesn't disagree with the captain. The men have been trained to do a terrible thing and the only thing that's going to see them through it is their 'unqualified belief in the unified chain of command', he says. On the one occasion when the XO slightly screws up this process – concerned about a fire in the galley flaring up – Hackman lectures him about it later, in the privacy of the captain's cabin. The captain gives the order, and then the XO repeats it, or says: 'I concur, captain.' (A phrase we might all like to hear more often from co-workers.) There are several scenes which make all this very clear indeed – without ever being dull. We are taught that in the event of a weapons drill, and indeed prior to the actual release of weapons, the men must hear the XO's voice right after the captain's.

Then there's the very thorough education in nuclear sub procedures – or director Tony Scott's version of it – that we're given in the early stages of the film, without which the big scene wouldn't be half so good.

So the shouting, when it comes, packs some welly. And Hackman, even while playing an unapologetic hard man, is quite careful around his XO, quite measured in his responses. He is mostly soft, civil and smooth as silk, although you're sure there's steel beneath. Washington, cleverly, never pitches his voice much above 'mildly irate' until the big scene. When Denzel says he enjoys riding Arabians in his spare time, Gene says that he couldn't manage a horse like that himself: 'Just give me an old paint.'īut while the conflict is there, the actors keep it contained. Denzel is Harvard educated, a new breed of sophisticated officer Hackman is of the old-fashioned point-me-and-I'll-shoot-it variety, but smart enough to be threatened by his XO's nuanced cool. Captain and XO clash, subtly and then increasingly less subtly, from their first meeting.

Washington plays his new number two, the executive officer or 'XO' onboard the sub. 'There's trouble in Russia,' Hackman, the submarine captain, tells his crew: 'and they called us!' Obviously the film is set on board an American nuclear sub at a time when rebels are running around Russia and threatening to unleash nuclear weapons. But the makers of Crimson Tide go to a lot of trouble to make this scene special. Washington and Hackman are such superb actors that if you had them yelling at each other, and over each other, while arguing about their shopping, or a pair of gardening gloves, it would be worth tuning in for.

Im the captain