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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Wolf’s Call’ on Netflix, a French Submarine Thriller About a Seaman with ‘Golden Ears’

Where to stream:.

• The Wolf's Call

Netflix’s The Wolf’s Call , or Le Chant du Loup in its native French, is the latest in a long line of movies in which sonar pings and whines soundtrack suspenseful submarine drama. This modestly budgeted thriller tweaks the formula — you know, pasty men hunched over consoles in cramped control rooms and shouting stuff like “Up periscope!” and “Ten seconds ’til impact!” and “Never mind, it’s just a whale!” — by focusing on the Acoustic Warfare Analyst, or the guy who uses his super-sensitive ears to identify precisely what object is making the sonar sing.

THE WOLF’S CALL : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Setting: the near future, many leagues under the sea. Chanteraide (Francois Civil) has “golden ears” and an encyclopedic mind. With headphones on and eyes fixated on the sonar readout, he can identify the make and model of a submarine by the whirr of its propeller. He can even distinguish subtle anomalies in the sound to pinpoint specific craft by name. This guy. He’s apparently the Mozart of Acoustic Warfare Analysts.

But there’s one enemy vessel he struggles to ID, and it nearly gets his French Navy sub sunk before the movie can barely get started. Thanks to some improbable heroics, the crew accomplishes its mission and lives to disrupt the peaceful lives of tuna and octopi another day. The XO and CO on board, Grandchamp (Reda Kateb) and D’Orsi (Omar Sy) respectively, pat Monsieur Ears on the back and tell him to put the incident behind him. But Chanteraide gets chewed out by his commandant CIRA (Jean-Yves Berteloot), who chalks up his aural talents as too intuitive in the face of cold, hard calculations. “This is the military, not art school,” the commandant spits, before banning Chanteraide from accessing Navy records.

Yet the origin of the mystery sub gnaws away at Chanteraide, and he goes so far as to identify the commandant’s computer password by the sound of the keystrokes(!). His research takes him to a bookstore, and, eventually, to bed with its manager, Diane (Paula Beer). In the bigger picture, political tensions with Russia intensify, prompting the Navy to deploy Grandchamp and D’Orsi on separate subs, one armed with — gulp — a nuclear warhead. Will Chanteraide end up sweating buckets over a glowing bank of buttons and monitors and blinky things, with the fate of millions in his hands? I’ll never tell.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s been said that Ned, Morgan Freeman’s character in Unforgiven , can shoot a bird in the eye, flyin’. Well, Chanteraide is Ned, except he can hear a fish in the water, swimmin’. So put Super Ears Ned in The Hunt for Red October , Das Boot or Run Silent, Run Deep , and you’ve got The Wolf’s Call .

Performance Worth Watching: In a movie emphasizing macho hoo-ahh and chain-of-command plot theatrics over character development, Kateb’s portrayal of Grandchamp almost offsets his military bravado with a teensy snatch of touchy-feely appreciation for Chanteraide’s remarkable skills. Almost.

Memorable Dialogue: “You hear life. Great,” commandant CIRA says of Chanteraide’s talent, with all the skeptical dismissiveness you’d expect from a brass-balls military lifer.

Single Best Shot: The camera slowly zooms and pans to Chanteraide during a critical moment, centering him in the frame so you can just FEEL him LISTENING REALLY HARD.

Sex and Skin: Chanteraide’s hearing-holes are so sensitive, he can place his head between Diane’s breasts, post-coitus, and listen to the intricacies of her heartbeat.

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Our Take: The Wolf’s Call opens with a tense, thoughtfully executed 23-minute action sequence, and concludes with an even more complex and suspenseful 40 minutes of underwater strategy and warfare. The stuff in-between is all aftermath from the former and setup for the latter, and is just contextually realistic enough to be convincing. The screenplay doesn’t get too heavy with character development; Chanteraide’s talent may be extraordinary, but the rest of him is a soporific blank.

Such is the formula of genre filmmaking, which tends to emphasize tidy narrative schemes (irony is a considerably corny element here) and directorial prowess over any sort of broad commentary. Maybe you could assert that the film is about the flaws of military command procedure, which can be too, you know, militant for its own good — although that feels like a stretch, because it’s more of a device to systematically keep lowering the protagonist’s chances of survival in the third act. This is an overcomplicated way of saying you’ll forgive The Wolf’s Call for its contrivances because it succeeds at fulfilling its modest ambition of being a diverting exercise in tension and release.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Nobody’s reinventing the propeller here, but The Wolf’s Call is damn good at keeping us entertained.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

Stream The Wolf's Call on Netflix

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The Wolf's Call Reviews

There's an awful lot of far-fetched poppycock in this "Hunt for Red October" meets "Fail Safe."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 23, 2020

Fans of military thrillers will likely be satisfied, but in all honesty they deserve something a little better for their time and money.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 26, 2020

It's entertaining to revisit the classic tropes of submarine movies: claustrophobia, tense silence, sweating faces, cat-and-mouse strategy - all ingeniously played out between people who are supposed to be on the same team.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2019

Easily the best submarine movie since Crimson Tide, The Wolf's Call is a strong action-thriller that will keep you riveted.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2019

The Wolf's Call nails the kind of hard-nosed heroism that audiences may well be missing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 3, 2019

The plot, which heads off in some improbable directions, recalls 'The Spy Who Loved Me' in a way you suspect it's not supposed to.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 29, 2019

If you're tired of Hollywood focusing on superhero movies instead of making submarine thrillers that aspire for the quality and appeal of "The Hunt for Red October," "The Wolf's Call" has your back.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2019

Far from blowing my mind, The Wolf's Call does what it needs to do, and surprises, in some ways.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 23, 2019

Slick submarine thriller has violence, language.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 17, 2019

A naval submarine thriller that shows, for better or worse, that French cinema is capable of much more than what is contained within art house walls.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 27, 2019

Despite the excursions into fantasy, this submarine saga with a French flavour is a fun watch.

Nobody's reinventing the propeller here, but The Wolf's Call is damn good at keeping us entertained.

Full Review | Jun 21, 2019

An altogether gripping experience... placing a young man with exceptional hearing powers at the heart of an apocalyptic scenario that only he can resolve.

Full Review | Mar 12, 2019

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‘the wolf’s call’ (‘le chant du loup’): film review.

The $23 million French submarine thriller 'The Wolf's Call' was picked up by Netflix for release in the U.S. and other territories.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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Submarine movies are not usually a dime a dozen, probably because they cost more than a dime to make. But the past few years have seen a handful of submersible flicks hitting screens both big and small, including the flag-waving Gerard Butler starrer Hunter Killer and Thomas Vinterberg’s Kursk (both out in 2018), the submarine-as-pirate ship saga Black Sea , and the Shawn Ryan series Last Resort , which was a sort of Mutiny on the Bounty centered on a sub carrying ballistic warheads.

The French now enter the game with The Wolf’s Call ( Le Chant du loup ), tackling the genre from the highly specific angle of an oreille d’or — which means “golden ear” and refers to the job of a submarine sonar technician. If that doesn’t necessarily, um, sound exciting, writer-director Antonin Baudry turns the function into an altogether gripping experience for his debut feature, placing a young man with exceptional hearing powers at the heart of an apocalyptic scenario that only he can resolve.

It’s a little over-the-top at times, with enough twists, turns and post-Cold War crises to seem unreal. But for his first stab at the helm, Baudry assuredly guides the movie’s whopping (for France) $23 million budget in a style that’s closer to Hollywood than to the Cahiers du cinema , offering up a slick underwater thriller that never lets up from the opening shot. With a cast featuring veterans Omar Sy, Mathieu Kassovitz and Reda Kateb alongside relative newbie Francois Civil, Wolf has already raked in close to a million admissions at home, with Netflix scooping the film up for the U.S. and other territories.

Hitting the ground running, or more like diving, the story starts with a French attack sub poised to rescue a special forces team off the coast of Syria. Its captain, Grandchamp (Kateb), and second-in-command, D’Orsi (Sy), are doing their best to remain undetected by Syrian troops patrolling the beach and an Iranian warship floating just above them.

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Their success is entirely dependent on Chanteraide (Civil), the gifted “golden ear” whose job it is to interpret every single noise picked up by sonar, determining its origin and weighing its potential risk. (A submarine cannot really see underwater, which is why it relies on sound to both navigate and analyze various threats.)

Like some kind of sonic encyclopedia, Chanteraide can tell you exactly what make and model of ship is nearby simply by hearing its rudder in action. But when an unknown noise is heard just as the mission gets underway, Chanteraide and the crew are thrown into disarray, making it out alive only thanks to a heroic — and rather implausible — act that involves Grandchamp taking down a helicopter all on his own.

Back at the base in France, Chanteraide is reprimanded for his failure to recognize the sound and grows obsessed with finding its source. In the process he meets Diane (Paula Beer), a sudden love interest who seems to have been tossed into the narrative as an afterthought, if not to move the plot ahead a few more degrees. Meanwhile, Grandchamp has been promoted to captain of L’Effroyable (literally: The Frightening), a stare-of-the-art nuclear sub being sent to sea in order to dissuade a growing conflict between Russia and Finland, which really means Russia and the European Union.

At this point many, many things happen at once, with Chanteraide suddenly propelled into the driver’s seat of what may be a full-scale nuclear war. How this happens is not all that believable, even if Baudry — who studied engineering and worked as a diplomat (the latter was the basis for his hit graphic novel Quai d’Orsay , which he adapted into the script for Bertrand Tavernier’s film The French Minister ) — tries to be as credible as he can while ratcheting up the tension every few minutes.

'Hunter Killer': Film Review

What’s perhaps most convincing about The Wolf’s Call is its focus on French military hierarchy and protocols, and how a guy like Chanteraide fits into the mix. Some of the movie’s strongest scenes are those showing the boy genius testing his skills out as his superiors — including a trash-talking admiral played by Kassovitz — look on in both approbation and disguised contempt, ready to pounce on him as soon as he fails.

Baudry, himself a product of the French meritocracy, seems fascinated by how power lies in the hands of an elite few while those in the ranks must suffer their wrath and its consequences. “We’re in France,” jokes Sy’s character at one point when referring to a broken computer aboard his submarine — a submarine that’s meant to prevent the next world war from occurring. Meanwhile, a simple phone call could stop the whole disaster in a heartbeat, except rules of command have made that impossible.

The plot escalates to an insane level after the one-hour mark, pitting sub against sub and seamen against seamen, with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance. Again, it’s too much to be true, but also well paced and well played enough that you don’t really care, with the cast — especially Kassovitz and Civil ( Back to Burgundy ), who shows he has the chops of an action star here — making it all fairly riveting to watch.

Working with DP Pierre Cottereau ( Conviction ) and production designer Benoit Barouh ( Cold War ), Baudry goes big when he needs to for certain major set pieces, yet mostly keeps things confined to the tight quarters of the main setting. Sound designer Randy Thom ( The Revenant ), who works at Skywalker, does an excellent job creating the various underwater noises that plague Chanteraide day and night, while a score from tomandandy ( 47 Meters Down ) keeps the stakes high throughout. For such a big French budget, it’s money well spent. And for his first time behind the camera, Baudry manages to successfully steer this massive ship to dock by the last act.

Production companies: Pathe, Tresor Films, Chi-Fou-Mi Productions Cast: Francois Civil, Mathieu Kassovitz, Omar Sy, Reda Kateb, Paula Beer Director, screenwriter: Antonin Baudry Producers: Jerome Seydoux, Alain Attal, Hugo Selignac Director of photography: Pierre Cottereau Production designer: Benoit Barouh Costume designer: Mimi Lempicka Editors: Nassim Gordji Tehrani, Saar Klein Composer: tomandandy Casting director: Pierre-Jacques Benichou Sound designer: Randy Thom Sales: Playtime

In French 115 minutes

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The wolf's call.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 0 Reviews
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Common Sense Media Review

Slick submarine thriller has violence, language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Wolf's Call is a French (with English subtitles) thriller about imminent nuclear attack, and the efforts a French submarine crew makes to prevent a nuclear response. Mature language ("f--k" and "s--t") isn't unexpected given the setting and high-stakes circumstances. While no one…

Why Age 14+?

A nuclear threat looms over Europe. Two submarines torpedo each other, each with

"F--k," "s--t," and "crap."

A serviceman is kicked off a crew owing to traces of marijuana found in his drug

A man and woman have sex. Breasts are shown briefly.

Any Positive Content?

Multiple characters steadfastly demonstrate their loyalty to country, military,

Sometimes there's a moral obligation to break the rules in order to do the right

Violence & Scariness

A nuclear threat looms over Europe. Two submarines torpedo each other, each with justification and regret. Bloody casualties follow. Officers realize that for the good of the planet, they have to "neutralize" a fellow officer, meaning kill him.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A serviceman is kicked off a crew owing to traces of marijuana found in his drug test. Someone refers to a "spliff." Adults smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Multiple characters steadfastly demonstrate their loyalty to country, military, and the good of the world.

Positive Messages

Sometimes there's a moral obligation to break the rules in order to do the right thing.

Parents need to know that The Wolf's Call is a French (with English subtitles) thriller about imminent nuclear attack, and the efforts a French submarine crew makes to prevent a nuclear response. Mature language ("f--k" and "s--t") isn't unexpected given the setting and high-stakes circumstances. While no one spells out the disastrous implications (mass destruction and death) if nuclear war isn't averted, most teens will understand the threat. Two submarines torpedo each other and many men are killed and wounded in the bloody battle, but the larger takeaway is that loyalty of individual military men to each other is important, but difficult to weigh against loyalty to the military, country, and the good of humanity. A serviceman is kicked off a crew owing to traces of marijuana found in his drug test. Someone refers to a "spliff." Adults smoke cigarettes. A man and woman have sex. Breasts are shown briefly. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

THE WOLF'S CALL focuses on navy sonar expert Socks (Francois Civil), a young and talented submariner who has a gift for hearing what others can't hear through the murk of ocean depths. By sound alone, he can count the propellers of unseen enemy craft. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of what nation's vessels have which motors and how those motors sound. His certified ID can make the difference between his submarine attacking an approaching vessel or leaving it be. When it appears that Russia is making nuclear threats, France sends out a nuclear sub with the instructions that an order from the president may come to launch a retaliatory nuclear sub if Russia strikes first. Trouble is, it appears that a Middle Eastern nation has pulled a fast one designed to make it seem as if Russian has launched that nuclear threat, to trigger a destabilizing war among international superpowers. The French president orders the nuclear response which, for security purposes, shuts down communications with the nuclear sub so the order can't be rescinded. Socks figures out the "Russian" launch was a trick and spends the rest of the movie trying to warn his former commander helming the nuclear sub to stand down, with bloody results among a group of well-meaning French navy men fighting each other to save the world.

Is It Any Good?

There's much to recommend in this film, including taut pacing, a thriller premise, and an appealing lead character with a powerful set of ears. Plentiful naval jargon makes the plot feel both authentic and, in some instances, incomprehensible, but in general the action moves forward at a good clip and the simple task of preventing world-wide nuclear war is clear enough for all to understand. The Wolf's Call may be too confusing for younger teens, but given that many video games are more violent, blood and guts won't be too intense for those old enough to follow the plot turns. Older teens will understand the subtleties and mixed emotions of those who must destroy their friends in order to prevent world-wide destruction and death.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Why is it important that military service men and women are bound to follow orders? To whom does a sailor owe loyalty in the instance of an incorrect order?

Do you think the men on the Titan were correct in ignoring Navy protocol in their effort to save the world from a nuclear war? Why or why not?

Why are there so many movies about potential nuclear threats? How does The Wolf's Call compare?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : June 20, 2019
• Cast : Francois Civil , Omar Sy , Matthieu Kassovitz , Reda Kateb
• Director : Abel Lanzac
• Inclusion Information : Black actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 115 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : June 22, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

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UniFrance/YouTube

Netflix’s ‘The Wolf’s Call’ offers tense submarine warfare for Tom Clancy fans

For when you realize ‘the hunt for red october’ isn’t streaming..

Brenden Gallagher

Posted on Jun 22, 2019     Updated on May 20, 2021, 10:05 am CDT

When Americans think of French cinema, they think of ponderous philosophical cinematic meditations, often in black and white, often rife with ennui. There is barely an ounce of ennui to be found in The Wolf’s Call (Le Chant Du Loup) , a naval submarine thriller that shows, for better or worse, that French cinema is capable of much more than what is contained within art house walls.

RELEASE DATE: 6/20/2019

DIRECTOR: Antonin Baudry

STREAMING: Netflix

A throwback to the kind of military thriller they don’t make in Hollywood anymore.

The Wolf’s Call offers pulse-pounding action and military intrigue on a level you just don’t see from Hollywood filmmaking anymore. It is a well-constructed, if familiar and predictable, action film that will thrill Tom Clancy fans and habitual History Channel viewers.

The film stars François Civil as Chanteraide, a French submarine technician known for his “Golder Ear.” With just a few seconds of audio, he can detect the make, model, and most importantly, the nationality of another vessel. Chanteraide is a prodigy, and as with all cinematic prodigies, he has that dangerous mix of cockiness and aloofness that drives his superiors mad…until he inevitably earns their begrudging respect because he is just that damn good goddamn it.

We open with a tense naval skirmish that lasts about 10 minutes and unfolds so cleanly you could throw it into an introductory screenwriting textbook. Enemies are detected, but where and what exactly are they? Chanteraide has to find out. Time is of the essence. But, for the first time ever his Golden Ears are failing him. He can’t identify this submarine, and his inability to determine whether it is a friend, foe, or a sperm whale nearly gets his crew killed.

After the pulse-pounding near miss, we learn that Chanteraide is just one piece of a massive French naval machinery that has been forced into action by its global commitments. The skirmish was in Syria, which inflamed tensions with Russia, which led to Russian aggression in Finland, and now the crew is going to be taking command of a top-class nuclear submarine, the frontline in what could become total war. Oh, and you’d better believe things are going to escalate from there.

Chanteraide, of course, will join his crew, along with the perfect number of war-weary veterans who each receive a monologue about the tough reality of war and fresh-faced young idealists with very few lines. And, of course, he will become obsessed with redemption in the meantime. His Golden Ear has never failed him, and he’s going to risk his career and his wellbeing to figure out what went wrong. “The Wolf’s Call” is both the sonar call that indicates your sub has been detected and the obsessive focus that comes when your profession involves protecting dozens of men from certain death.

Chanteraide has heard the wolf’s call. Will it ruin him? In 1994 that idea would have been worth a $200 million budget.

The premise sounds like something out of that part of the ’90s when instead of superhero movies, Hollywood produced endless adaptations of Clancy novels and tirelessly tried to replicate the success of 1986’s Top Gun . Director Antonin Baudry has clearly learned the lessons of that bygone era. The film is tight but offers just the right amount of philosophical musing and character development to elevate it beyond a mere submarine shoot ‘em up. There’s even a love interest who Chanteraide takes to bed within minutes of meeting her who will offer subtle, but ultimately insignificant challenges to his patriarchal worldview.

While The Wolf’s Call is in no danger of winning the best foreign language film Oscar, it is no wonder Netflix opted to pick up American distribution rights for the film with an aggressive presale. Just as its American properties like Stranger Things and Always Be My Maybe evoke types of films that aren’t made anymore, The Wolf’s Call should bolster the streamer’s dwindling back catalog by offering something that a dad with a penchant for military films might enjoy. When he realizes, much to his dismay, that The Hunt for Red October is only available as a DVD rental, this will be more than worth settling for.

Before you recommend this film to the war nerd in your life, it does bear mentioning that the film’s $22 million budget pales in comparison to most American war thrillers. If it’s tense strategic maneuvering that they like, then great. But, no one should go into The Wolf’s Call expecting blockbuster-level explosions. That being said, anyone with even passing experience in film production will be impressed with what the production team is able to achieve on a modest action budget. Though the submarine action is contained the beginning and end of the film, both sequences punch above their weight.

The Wolf’s Call doesn’t exactly transcend its subject matter, and it isn’t intended to. Though there are moments where we get lines that are painfully French such as, “This is the military. Not art school,” and the characters smoke after sex, this film is as straightforward as anything Hollywood might produce. The villains are the villains that a red-blooded NATO ally might expect: Russia and various Middle Eastern belligerents. The heroes are generally loyal, white, Western military men. It bleeds red, white, and blue, just from a different flag. While the film is entertaining, there’s nothing new to see here. That status quo remains blissfully unchallenged.

If the idea of submarine warfare with a little international intrigue and romance mixed in is your idea of a good Wednesday night, you’ll enjoy The Wolf’s Call . If your genre tastes lie elsewhere, then there is no particular reason to heed this call unless your father-in-law comes over armed with a bottle of scotch and anecdotes about naval warship classes.

Still not sure what to watch tonight? Here are our guides for the absolute  best movies on Netflix , must-see  Netflix original series ,  documentaries ,  docuseries , and  movies .

Looking for something more specific? Here are our Netflix guides for the  best war movies ,  documentaries ,  anime ,  indie flicks ,  true crime ,  food shows ,  rom-coms ,  LGBT movies ,  alien movies ,  gangster movies ,  Westerns ,  film noir , and  movies based on true stories  streaming right now. There are also  sad movies  guaranteed to make you cry,  weird movies  to melt your brain,  old movies when you need something classic , and  standup specials  when you really need to laugh. Or check out  Flixable , a search engine for Netflix.

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Brenden Gallagher is a politics reporter and cultural commentator. His work has been published by Motherboard, Complex, and VH1. He’s the co-founder of Beer Money Films, an indie production company. Based in Los Angeles, he works in television drama as a writers assistant.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Wolf's Call

In the near future, a French submarine finds itself in a crisis situation. In the near future, a French submarine finds itself in a crisis situation. In the near future, a French submarine finds itself in a crisis situation.

• Antonin Baudry
• François Civil
• Mathieu Kassovitz
• 192 User reviews
• 55 Critic reviews
• 1 win & 3 nominations

Top cast 39

• Chanteraide

• D'Orsi

• Second SNLE-B2R

• Officier navigation SNLE

• Veilleur sonar SNA
• (as Pierre Cevaër)

• Opérateur table - SNA

• Maître de centrale

• Elaboration SNA
• Barreur SNA
• Opérateur torpille
• Second Titane - Karadec
• Officier de tir - SNLE
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia A "Wolf's Call' is a navy slang for active sonar alarm. That means the submarine is detected and targeted. Active sonars sound very different to the human ear based on the transmission frequency. Low-frequency sonars are a very deep, like a moaning bass. Medium frequency sonars are like some synth doing an imitation of whale songs. High frequency sonars are strident and creepy like "howlings."
• Goofs The missile targeting France was launched from the Pacific Ocean, near Kamchatka. According to the movie, it flies above Russia, then Eastern Europe. With Earth being round, it would have most certainly flown above the North Pole.

Aristotle : The human beings come in three kinds: the living, dead and those who go to sea.

• Connections Referenced in Notre-Dame on Fire (2022)

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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What it's about

A thrilling French movie about a nuclear submarine division that is confronted with a world-ending scenario.

One sonar agent is at the center of the story, his exceptional hearing capabilities are the main resource of the submarine commanders he works for (one of whom is played by the masterful Reda Kateb).

Wolf’s Call tries very hard to be a Hollywood movie, but even if it serves as a reminder that countries like France don’t have to always make arthouse films to be noticed, the visual effects and the writing fall short of that big-budget feel.

Still, if you’re looking for a fun movie that’s full of surprises, solid acting, and a great heroism tale, you’ll love this.

The first sentence of the above review sums it up perfectly. What I liked best about this movie was that it gave a different perspective into a military thriller other than an American or Russian point of view.

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The Wolf’s Call Review: Ears Save The World In French Netflix Thriller

A thoroughly silly premise is treated with baffling seriousness here, but it somehow comes together in an entertaining overall package.

In the French Netflix thriller  The Wolf’s Call , known in its native tongue as Le Chant du Loup , François Civil plays an underwater acoustics expert by the name of Chanteraide whose finely-tuned lugholes are so powerful that he can identify the exact make and model of a submarine just by the whirr its propellors make as they churn through the water. This is the basis for traditional claustrophobic deep-sea submarine shenanigans with a certain twist of utter ridiculousness, and it’s a right laugh, even when it shouldn’t be.

It’s the near-future again, though it scarcely matters since the bulk of the modestly-budgeted film takes place in the cramped confines of a submarine, with its characters hunched over banks of monitors and buttons and sonar readouts and the like. Political tensions with Russia are escalating, but aren’t they always? There’s a mystery sub on the loose that even Chanteraide’s well-trained ears can’t identify, and there’s a whole stretch of The Wolf’s Call  devoted to him investigating it, despite his XO and CO, Grandchamp (Reda Kateb) and D’Orsi (Omar Sy), telling him to forget about it, and his excellently dismissive and skeptical commandant (Jean-Yves Berteloot) telling him he’s a weirdo.

Taken together, all of this is a surprisingly engaging exercise in genre filmmaking. It’s tense and well-constructed and treated with enough seriousness that you sometimes forget how much matters rest on one dude’s bat hearing. The problems arise whenever you’re awkwardly reminded of that. Sometimes  The Wolf’s Call  will contrive an excuse for Chanteraide to hear something extremely nebulous and then leap to a string of aural conclusions, and it’s terribly difficult not to laugh at these moments. And now and again we’re almost challenged not to do so by serious dramatic sequences that amount to little more than him listening very intently.

You have to rely on the broader context, obviously. But sometimes there hardly seems to be any. The characters are all archetypes and are never asked to do anything that might challenge them — even Chanteraide is just a pair of world-saving ears stuck on what’s otherwise a pretty nondescript bloke. And the plot is all mechanics. There’s no broader theme or commentary or subtext; it’s just the tidy push and pull of underwater strategy, snooping and warfare, and for a bit too long at that. Still, I’d be lying if I said that  The Wolf’s Call didn’t accomplish its basic mandate of entertaining an audience, in ways it meant to and ways I suspect it didn’t.

Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

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