alexanderdavies-99382 "Gray Lady Down" is a poor film. A fine cast of character actors are being wasted with mediocre material. Charlton Heston was slightly past his best in terms of box office appeal but his fans might enjoy this film. Look out for a young pre-Superman Christopher Reeve in a small role. "Gray Lady Down" was one of his first films. We have been here before, regarding the plot. There are no fresh twists or surprises of any kind. Forgettable fare.

innocuous A better-than-average disaster movie, due mostly to the absence of any ridiculous scenes. (There are no overweight older Jewish women who won swimming medals many years ago trying to reach the sub, for example.)On the other hand, Ronnie Cox as the first officer goes to pieces very quickly and you wonder why the Navy ever thought he'd be able to command a sub of his own. Also, you've got to ponder the initial collision. The sub's crew basically just lets a freighter in open water run them down, not even noticing that the freighter is in the area until it's too late to do anything about it. Kind of makes you wonder.Heston is restrained in his role, which works out pretty well. Everybody else does a good job (except for Cox) and the special FX are average for the time.Definitely worth watching.

ranger27 I remember seeing this movie in the theater when it came out and the review in Time magazine. OK I remember one part of what was a positive review. It said that the movie avoids the bane of the disaster genre, the subplot. The best sentence in the review that I think describes the movie perfectly is," It is a job-oriented movie about job-oriented men." I can't think of a better way to describe it. The actors give there best professional naval officer performances (well maybe not Carradine...good performance...not sure about the naval officer part) and the movie sticks its subject, the rescue. An entertaining movie that delivers a straightforward story and there is nothing wrong with that.

Eric-62 "Gray Lady Down", which bears very little resemblance to the novel it was based on, is a nice, entertaining action thriller that holds up well today in contrast to today's action films because it's cloaked with a realism and plausibility that today's filmmakers seem determined to avoid like the plague.