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Matt Craven, né Matthew Crnkovich (no, we don't know how you pronounce it, though it would be cool if it was pronounced "Matt Crunkowich"), has enjoyed a long and admirable H!ITG! career, from Lt. Dave Spradling in A Few Good Men to the conflicted Dr. Tim Lonner on the short-lived series L.A. Doctors to the cuckoo activist Dusty Wright in The Life of David Gale to his current role in the current Assault on Precinct 13. But the part that exemplified his particular, twitchy appeal to us was Lt. Roy Zimmer of the USS Alabama in the excellent submarine melodrama Crimson Tide.

In that film, tempers flare and tensions run high and Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington bark at one another -- you know, typical sub melodrama stuff. Sonars are evaded, emergency dives are undertaken, hulls creak ominously, and someone gets locked in a compartment that's flooding, so the others have to seal it off to save the sub! Even if it means sealing that man's fate!

Subs are rough, what with everybody all crammed in like that, standing so close they're practically sharing underpants. And in Crimson Tide, when push comes to shove (literally), and everyone's deciding should we or shouldn't we launch this nuke at Russia?, it's Zimmer, the war-mongering yes man, who gathers a mutinous band and betrays the virtuous Denzel Washington. Denzel Washington! The very personification of crew-inspiring, bad-decision-defying virtue! Who could stab him in the back?

Matt Craven, that's who.

Damned war-mongering yes men.

Then again, there's always been something suspicious about Craven. Maybe it's the glasses. Or the slightly unnatural intensity. Or the fact that his name is "Craven." Or that he's Canadian, born in beautiful Ontario, which, to Americans, lends him an air of duplicity.

Whatever it is, there's just something about Matt Craven that makes you think you can't...quite...trust... -- Wait! He's pulled his gun! Call the captain of the watch! Or the desk sergeant! Or the...er, friendly, doughy guy who looks trustworthy, and can help us thwart Craven's underhanded treachery! (In Crimson Tide, the friendly, doughy, trustworthy guy is played by H!ITG! extraordinaire George Dzundza.)

You get the feeling that, had Craven lived in the court of Elizabeth I, he'd have been that kind of treacherous courtier who's always standing just behind the queen, and who sneaks off to make secret deals in the shadows and wears a big bulbous ring with poison in it. We're not exactly sure what he's up to Assault on Precinct 13, but we'll say this: Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne had better think twice about drinking from any chalices of mead.