Director Kevin Macdonald talks 'Black Sea'

THE LAST TIME director Kevin Macdonald stopped by Philadelphia he was interviewing local relatives of Bob Marley for his epic 2012 documentary of the musician.

He returned recently to promote his new feature, "Black Sea," an entirely different project - this one the obviously fictional story of a salvage specialist (Jude Law) on a crazy undersea mission to recover gold from a long-lost World War II submarine.

The movie has been earning good reviews for its chops as an offbeat action movie and also for its working-class point of view.

"It's certainly not a message movie," Macdonald said. "It's a thriller and a suspense movie. Buts it's got other things going on. Jude plays the kind of person who feels like they're not in control of their own lives. That they work for these faceless individuals who control the world, a world that is lacking in care and compassion for the ordinary person."

The movie's hard-luck, blue-collar characters are forced by economic circumstances to take the dangerous job, so it's easy to see them as exploited victims. But when the gold enters the picture, everything gets complicated.

"The psychology of the movie gets very interesting," Macdonald said. "You see how the men feel victimized by the system, but they've also internalized its values - you have to have money or be rich in order to be somebody. The system dictates that you're a failure if you don't have money.

"You get different views of human nature. You have a representation of this idea that this is just the way it is - some people are successful and those individuals take more and everybody else gets what they get and should be grateful. Through Jude, you have this other view of things, this character espousing the solidarity of the working man. He's saying, 'We can share this, we can get on.' "

At the same time, the movie has great fun incorporating the mechanical ingenuity of the men into the escalating tension of the plot.

"They're using the skills that they have, skills that are no longer valued, to survive. I think people really relate to that."