While the transformation of Matthew McConaughey from rom-com joke to serious actor got lots of attention a few years ago, the ongoing transformation of Jude Law from highbrow eye candy to virtuoso character actor has largely escaped notice. [...] in movie after movie, Law keeps showing us new sides — a nervous wreck (“Side Effects”), an officious politician (“Anna Karenina”), a wacky Internet personality (“Contagion”), a Cockney safecracker (“Dom Hemingway”) ... [...] in “Black Sea,” we find him in the sort of role Sean Connery might have played in the 1970s, a working-class Scottish tough guy. [...] it most definitely misses, but the reasons are elusive. When he finds out roughly where it is, he gets financial backing, puts together a crew of Brits and Russians and sets out to retrieve it. Director Kevin Macdonald and screenwriter Dennis Kelly try to engage our attention by exploring the Brit-Russian dynamic and by having the men talk about their personal lives. [...] in truth, the boat could blow up and no one in the audience would care, so long as Jude Law survived and got his loot. [...] one strong character isn’t enough, at least not in an ensemble piece and not when that character is surrounded by walking cliches. To the filmmakers’ credit, they don’t go so far as to show the Russians dancing to a balalaika by the campfire, but that might only be because there are no campfires on a submarine.

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