Poseidon (2006) February 19, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Wolfgang Petersen
Wolfgang Petersen likes his water. The Perfect Storm and Das Boot director just can’t get enough of it apparently, as he braves the dangerous world of the remake to bring us this updated version of a 1972 classic, The Poseidon Adventure.
When thousands of passengers board the cruise liner ‘Poseidon’ hoping to spend a special New Year’s Eve at sea, they’ve no idea just how special it’s going to be. Shortly after midnight, a rogue wave hits the side of the ship causing it to flip upside down. With many passengers and crew dead, the survivors are forced to fend for themselves, but this isn’t good enough for Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell). He has to find his daughter who is elsewhere on the ship, so he teams up with resourceful Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) and a group of other passengers leaving the apparent safety of the ballroom in search of a way out.
Now there’s a disaster plot summary if ever I heard one. It’s certainly got all the elements; it’s just unfortunate that it goes through the motions almost as formulaically. All the negative reviews got my expectations pretty low, and I actually ended up enjoying this movie quite a bit, although I’ll admit that it’s not much better than any other standard ‘disaster movie’ fare, it’s certainly not significantly worse in any way.
Peterson’s direction doesn’t add much to the proceedings, although he’s clearly not afraid of using CG to enhance the film’s aesthetics. This heavy reliance is probably necessary for the most part, producing a nice opening sequence of Josh Lucas taking a jog around the outside of a non-existent cruise ship. In some places the effects stand out a little bit too much, but that’s not totally inexcusable in this world of over the top action movies.
The principal cast, including Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss, all do a good job of shouting and looking scared, which is really the most that’s required of them. There’s very little character development, and what is present feels forced, so you never build up a proper relationship with the characters. And that’s the primary failing point of this flick, because the genre dictates that you need to care about the characters to care about their outcome – that being the point of the movie.
So it’s slightly uninspiring, and while I was never bored during the brisk 100-minute running time, I was never riveted either. One fair observation is that it was surprisingly graphic in showing some of the deaths for a movie at this certificate, and held back by making it quite obvious who’ll survive and who won’t. Still, I don’t think the trouncing it received from critics was entirely warranted – it’s not a complete stinker, just an average movie that fell short of the mark.
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