If you were disappointed by the Resistance mutiny plot in Star Wars: The Last Jedi I highly recommend you check out Crimson Tide, a 1995 movie which I may or may not have seen 18 times starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. Other than the incongruity of Washington playing a character named “Ronald” it is so much more interesting a military drama than TLJ.

For one thing, Crimson Tide takes care to establish the fundamental worldview differences between Hackman’s Captain Ramsey and Washington’s Commander Hunter, even though the two meet and talk for the first time under an incredibly urgent national security situation. Ramsey is Navy salt through and through, an effective and seasoned sailor who only knows the military and orders. Hunter is educated, erudite, philosophical, and sees the bigger picture in world events.

See how the mirrors behind Ramsey catch his senior staff so that their reflections are watching Hunter along with Ramsey. All the senior staff know each other well and are highly loyal to Ramsey, while Hunter as Ramsey’s new second-in-command is comparatively unknown other than having his friend Blond Aragorn on board with him. Ramsey and his senior officers want to see what kind of person Hunter is, whether he was the right choice in this extremely high-stakes mission. This underlying distrust will have important implications later on.

And just in case we missed the point, the movie drives Ramsey and Hunter’s contrasts home again in a later scene where Ramsey is a raging asshole and Hunter just barely manages to hold onto his temper. Blond Aragorn then explains their contrasting worldviews to Hunter and the audience yet again.

It’s a little heavy-handed but it’s Hollywood, we’re not looking for subtlety here, and it’s one of the movie’s strengths that it errs on the side of clarity over cleverness every time. You can agree or disagree with the movie’s developments but no one who actually watched it could ever say, “errr, what was that about?”

Therefore, when circumstances pit Hunter and Ramsey against each other the conflict is about something meaningful, not “um why can’t you just talk to each other like grown-ass professionals.” Ramsey, for all his faults, doesn’t hide his plan from Hunter for no reason like a spiteful ninny. Hunter and Ramsey are both eminently clear to each other and the entire ship about exactly what they mean to do. This makes the conflict more meaningful, in addition to simply making real-world sense. I mean, how are you going to execute your plan if your crew doesn’t know it? No, the conflict isn’t over some stupid miscommunication. Rather it is over Hunter and Ramsey’s fundamental and strenuous disagreement over their core values, a disagreement that has implications not only for their mission but the fate of the world.

The conflict is all the more believable because, though the sympathy of the narrative lies with Hunter, he and Ramsey are both somewhat right and somewhat wrong as the military tribunal tells them at the end. Again, we return to their opposing worldviews. Hunter is looking at the bigger picture of world affairs and acting fully within military regulations when he relieves Ramsey of command. On the other hand, Ramsey isn’t wrong to assume for the sake of caution that their ship, the Alabama, might be the only submarine left to fire the nukes, and his adherance to their last known orders is procedurally correct. This is a conflict between two mature professionals who each fully believes himselfself to be in the right for pretty good reasons. That’s what makes it interesting. Though one of them took things way too far, he did so out of a conviction that he was lauded for in other situations and that he based his whole life on.

What makes the movie really shine is that it’s fundamentally about relationships. There is the central conflict between Hunter and Ramsey, but the other characters on board, Ramsey’s loyal senior staff and the young enlisted men who are frightened by the conflict between their two top leaders, have the chance to show their reactions and play a crucial role in the plot. Crammed into a can of tinned air strapped with nukes, hundreds of feet underwater with even communications cut off for much of the movie, all the crew have are each other. In this isolated state they are each other’s only allies, friends, recourse, and enemies. The choices they make under this extreme pressure–in every sense–are varied, nuanced, and believable. This intricacy is ultimately what makes the movie work as a layered drama instead of just two assholes screaming at each other. Two assholes screaming, by the way, becomes a damned near operatic performance in the hands of Hackman and Washington.

There are sacrifices and tough calls in Crimson Tide, too, and their portrayal is effective in a way most of TLJ’s death scenes were not. When Hunter orders a hatch sealed with three men caught on the other side because otherwise the entire ship would be lost, it is the saddest and most wrenching moment in the film. We actually watch these men try to stay afloat while they are drowning with no way out. We watch Hunter’s conflict, the grief and trauma of the man who is ordered by Hunter to seal the bay. There is a wise economy of words–no one goes on about the dilemma of the few and the many or how the situation makes them feel, there’s just desperation and resolve and the cold, hard facts of submarine depth and water pressure.

The narrative doesn’t demonize Hunter for this decision which was absolutely the right call, nor does it glorify him. It was an impossibly hard decision made under brutal circumstances, and the scene lets the event and its consequences stand on their own without any need to tell the audience what to think. That is how you do a scene about decisions made under impossible pressure, not have this weird doubletalk where it was necessary but also somehow bad and the character should feel bad.

Like TLJ Crimson Tide has a scene of officer-on-officer violence, and unlike TLJ actually puts it in the proper perspective. When an increasingly unhinged Ramsey punches Hunter in the face near the end of the movie, this is a sign of how far Ramsey has fallen from the standards of professionalism and decorum, and how badly the situation on board has deteriorated.

For my money, punching Hunter is a clearer sign of Ramsey’s fall than an earlier scene when he literally pulled a gun on his subordinates. At least when he threatened to kill a (white) petty officer his hand was shaking so hard the gun rattled against the threatened man’s glasses, which was a great touch. In contrast Ramsey is all leering superiority when he punishes Hunter and seems to enjoy deliberately hurting his executive officer. This scene also lends credence to my theory that Ramsey was racist the whole time toward Hunter and that his animosity–which began long before their command disagreements surfaced–had a lot to do with Hunter being so highly educated, thoughtful, well-spoken, and independent. I believe the word is “uppity.” I mean, the name of the sub is literally “The Alabama.“ Again, this is not a subtle movie.

In contrast Hunter is in control the entire time, unlike in their earlier clashes when Ramsey was needling Hunter and Hunter was understandably in a rage. Hunter has grown as a person and an officer, surer of himself and more in control than ever, while Ramsey has regressed and shown the true ugliness that he had been barely holding in check. There could potentially be a valid debate over having character development for a Black man consist of not fighting back while a white dude whales on him, but that is not a conversation I am a part of. The intention at any rate was to show that Hunter had grown beyond Ramsey, and was truer to the best traditions of the Navy and the decorum of his rank than Ramsey could ever claim to be. Even Ramsey admits it at the end.

Seeing a movie like Crimson Tide really brings home how shoddy the mutiny plot in TLJ was, how shallow and unbelievable the conflict, how juvenile the treatment of serious issues. 23 years later Crimson Tide still sets a high standard for mutiny movies, and TLJ failed in every regard.