For all of these reasons I went to see Poseidon.Now, I have never seen the original but I was hoping that this re-make of a 1970s disaster film would follow The Thomas Crowne Affair example of actually being better than the first one. Aferall, director Wolfgang Peterson brought us The Perfect Storm - so he knows water action; Troy - so he understands big budget eye-candy; Air Force One - so he gets American heroism; and In The Line of Fire - so he grasps dramatic pacing. He's also the guy that made the famous Das Boot - so I figured I was well within my rights to have high expectations for Poseidon. Ahhhhh ... if only they had been achieved.
The film takes all of the requisite elements of the genre and does them ... poorly. OK - so it's hard to be a sinking-ship film in the wake of Titanic but that shouldn't be an excuse to slack off. Although the set pieces are reasonably elaborate there never seems to be any urgency to the action. The sense of danger feels lukewarm and no genuine terror is ever supplied. Even a scene of intense claustrophic possibility is weakened by its early placement in the film as you know noone is going to die there. The film is full of underwater sequences that are likewise ruined by poor acting. Keep your mouths shut actors! You are trying to hold your breath in a freezing flood of water! OK - there is one moment where Kurt Russell does an impeccable job, but since his storyline is a direct rip-off from Armageddon it still feels like a cheat.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in the ship is the characters. Too little time is spent establishing them as anything other than archetypes so that when the action begins it is hard to care about their challenges. If less time had been spent filming Fergie's singing in the opening scenes then maybe some connections could have been made. But alas, the audience is left with nothing but a handful of charater clichés that race the rising tide with too many hysterics and not enough smarts. The women are bland, silly, and incapable. The minorities are doomed. The men are brave in that crazy way that only works in films. In the end, the survivors defy the odds (as well as some thermo-biology, physics, and literary basics) to reach safety. And then, unceremoniously, unemotionally, unsatisfactorally, the film ends. All I can say is it's a good thing I saw it on IMAX - cause that Josh Lucas is a beautiful thing.
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