Think of every military action movie cliche you can. The maverick hero who’s just an average guy. The uptight rule-following second-in-command who learns a good lesson. The token concerned woman who has one line. Enemies who aren’t so different after all. So many of these hackneyed stereotypes are thrown at the Navy thriller “Hunter Killer,” you have to wonder if this is the “Scary Movie” of submarine movies.

Directed by Donovan Marsh, “Hunter Killer” is just this side of a parody. But there’s so much fun to be had with formula, and if you aren’t taking “Hunter Killer” too seriously, the film is a hoot.

Based on the novel “Firing Point” by George Wallace and Don Keith, the plot concerns an underwater dogfight in the Barents Sea that’s keeping World War 3 at bay, while on the surface, a coup d’etat is unfolding at the Polyarny base in Russia. When the USS Tampa Bay goes down with 110 sailors, the target of a Russian torpedo, Capt. Joe Glass (Gerard Butler) is yanked out of the Scottish highlands. He’s plopped at the helm of a “hunter killer” sub, the USS Arkansas, to figure out just what is going on.

If there’s a playbook, no one’s following it. Military loyalty is a higher order that takes precedence over any politicking, and Joe needs to trust in that combat-forged code. Everyone’s going rogue, including the Russian defense minister Durov (Michael Gor), who usurps the handsome but very dumb Russian President Zakarin (Alexander Diachenko). In response, the U.S. Department of Defense and the NSA, headed up by Rear Admiral Fisk (Common) and Jayne Nordquist (Linda Cardellini) respectively, cook up a harebrained scheme for a special forces unit to extract Zakarin and get him on the sub. Gary Oldman, making an appearance as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is positively apoplectic.

“Hunter Killer” needs its radar calibrated, because while it bounces between serious and silly, it never quite finds a suitable place to land.