Poseidon Sails..... and Sinks

After several years of delayed production, Poseidon finally sails into theaters some thirty-four years after the original Poseidon Adventure hit movie screens. Based on the novel by Paul Gallico, Poseidon tells the story of a large cruise ship that literally turns upside down when it collides with a "rogue" (tidal) wave on New Year’s Eve, leaving a small group of passengers to fight for their survival. The earlier film featured an all-star cast that included Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Stella Stevens, Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, Carol Lynley, and Shelly Winters in an Oscar-winning performance. By contrast, this production stars a hyper Josh Lucas; a weary-looking Kurt Russell; a shockingly silent Richard Dreyfuss; and a fresh-faced Emmy Rossum.

The remake is directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who in recent years has established himself as a first-rate filmmaker. His impressive list of films includes Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, The Perfect Storm, and Troy. These critically solid and financially successful efforts have catapulted Petersen to near A-list status among directors. Here, though, he suffers a bit of a setback due to some questionable casting, deficient plotting, and a script that lacks a theme and force. The script by Mark Protosevich fails to give any of the film’s characters anything compelling to say in the film’s 99-minute running time. And there is only scant mention of characters’ occupations at opportune moments in the script. These glaring faults prevent this highly-anticipated project from being the summer movie event we have grown accustomed to seeing from the German director.

This production will undoubtedly draw comparisons to the original. The earlier film’s cast was an intriguing mix of rising stars of the 1970s and established stars from the 1950s and 1960s. The original was by no means a great movie. It probably wasn’t even a very good one. But it was memorable. The characters had quirks and individual moments that remain ensconced in the minds of ardent movie fans. Unfortunately, the remake leaves us with no such memories. Its characters are merely props for the next carefully staged stunt and escape sequence. Poseidon delivers some pulsating scenes due largely to special effects services provided by Giant Killer Robots, Hydraulx, Industrial Light and Magic, Lola Visual Effects, MPC, The Moving Picture Company, and Irwin Allen Productions. And there are three moments of genuine tension: an early scene involving a burning elevator shaft and two characters clinging to the hands of two others, a dark and claustrophobic crawl through a flooding air vent, and an underwater swimming sequence that rivals that of the original.

This failed production has made me realize that James Cameron’s Titanic has redefined the big budget disaster movie. Despite its record-setting Oscar night, it, too, was flawed. The Titanic script, which Cameron also wrote, was posted on the Internet within days of the film’s release, downloaded, and picked apart ad nauseum by the art-house crowd. But his three-hour and nineteen-minute epic delivered both jaw-dropping special effects and characters who had experienced moments of truth and emotion. By the time those glorious special effects arrived, we had seen that film’s two primary characters find each other, lose each other, and find each other yet again. Titanic was a disaster film that not only captured the physical destruction of one of the greatest tragedies of all time but the huge personal stakes that made that disaster and many others the subject of our nightmares and the very things that prompt renewed dreams and visions. Poseidon, on the other hand, bustles forward with such attention to its computer-generated special effects and such disregard for the science of its disaster and the larger themes of life, love, and loss that one wonders how the direction of this once-promising project drifted so aimlessly out to sea.

Grade: C

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