I want it on the record that I didn’t go into “Hunter Killer” ready to bash it, but I was really left with little choice. I was lucky enough to see an early screening of the film at the lovely AMC River East surrounded by fine folks excited to see the latest Gerard Butler action flick. When I say excited, I should clarify and say that most people there expected a “so bad it’s good” experience from “Hunter Killer.” I can certainly say that half of that statement is correct. “Hunter Killer” is bad. It just is. I was truly stunned by the sheer level of mediocrity on display. That sounds pretentious, but let me explain.

I knew within the first 10 minutes of the film that I was in for a bad time. The first introduction of our main protagonist Joe Glass, which is just Gerard Butler with a new name, sets the stage for the quality of the film. We see Glass preying on some CGI deer in the mountains, and I mention that they’re CGI because the effect is so bad that they look like moving cardboard cutouts. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not like the rest of the film will be slow, CGI submarine fights, right?

Wrong. The action – and I use that term in the most sparing of ways – is so incredibly dull that I found myself drifting into a popcorn induced coma. If you’ve ever played a water level of a video game, imagine that being your film going experience for about half of “Hunter Killer.” The movie seems to know this because it suddenly introduces a ground team that doesn’t become relevant until the end of the film. It’s surprising that with such a large cast of characters to follow, not a single one of them prove to be interesting enough to care about.

While the titular submarine felt the pressure and tension of the sea, I certainly didn’t. I can’t remember the last time I saw a film that left me feeling so disinterested. The stakes of the film are high for sure, but without an attachment to any of the characters taking up screen time I really couldn’t care less if our heroes make it home safe. The biggest issue is that none of the main characters have any character flaws. Gerard Butler plays a captain who never fails and not a single character changes in any way other than death by the end of “Hunter Killer.” It’s boring to watch characters never develop and I had to fight the urge to pull out my phone and check Twitter multiple times throughout the incredibly long 123 minutes. Not a single moment in the film surprised me, from start to finish.

Unlike the plot of “Hunter Killer,” the camera never stops moving. Never. It became nauseating to watch a camera constantly spin around actors as they tried to deliver their box-standard action film lines. Even in close-ups on the submarine, the camera continues to drift away from the action. It’s almost like the director had just learned about stabilizers and wanted to give them a test drive for over two hours. It happens throughout the entire film and I can’t believe not a single person on the production said something about how it looked.

Speaking of which, it feels like there wasn’t enough effort put in the production of “Hunter Killer” to make scenes look believable. The film is littered with old “Star Trek”-like scenes of crew members in the submarine being tossed by torpedo blasts. What’s hilarious about these scenes is that you can clearly make out actors grabbing bags and objects to make fall with them as they stumble over and the camera shakes. Another thing that really irked me was that Russian characters speak English in Russia. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that they switch back to speaking Russian in Russia toward the end of the film. It just makes me wonder what the thought process was behind anything happening in “Hunter Killer.” Beyond that, the film uses stock footage to represent the fleets of American and Russian militaries. It’s very brief when it happens, but the dip in quality of the footage was so apparent that it took me out of the film altogether.

“Hunter Killer” is a forgettable, harmless film that came out 20 years too late. The acting is phoned in, with everyone on set ready to receive their paycheck and go home. I can’t blame them though, the dialogue is so cheesy that it produced audible groans from the audience multiple times. “Hunter Killer” should sink to the bottom of the sea floor, never to return to the surface again.