Dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 2006, USA, 99mins
Cast: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum
Review by Philippa Bradnock
The summer tent pole season is upon us and with it comes (literally) the biggest release of the year. Poseidon is the remake of The Poseidon Adventure, the ultimate ropey ‘70s disaster movie. Wolfgang Petersen returns to the treacherous ocean of The Perfect Storm and Das Boot with this extravaganza of sea-going luxury gone awry. The wealthy passengers and crew of the luxury liner Poseidon are celebrating New Year’s Eve when a ‘rogue wave’ over 150 feet high hits the side of the boat and capsizes it upside-down. Most on board are killed and the rest are condemned to several hours of inverted life-threatening hijinks. A small band of daredevils goes against the crew’s orders and tries to make for the top (i.e. the bottom) of the boat to escape.
Poseidon is a by-the-numbers disaster action movie which only deviates from the standard in the extremes of catastrophic violence near the beginning. The grotesque posturing of the moneyed passengers made me long for the carnage (yes, you fling those chips around now, gambler boy, but just you wait…). But when it comes, the destruction and death is shockingly overwhelming: all those head wounds and broken limbs. Likewise, the scene where one character has to make the decision to sacrifice another to save himself offers a surprisingly grim situation without the usual heroic outcome. Almost every shot has glitter or tinsel in it, a floating reminder of the destroyed sheen of luxury overlaying the industrial interior. Comfort is violently transformed into lethal shards of metal, as if the ship has shown its real nature and turned on its passengers.
Despite this, we soon end up with a familiar band of characters. Two wannabe heroes vie with each other about the best way to cross flaming chasms. One charming virginal princess, just engaged, trades in daddy for her emasculated fiancé. A gutsy single mum tows a cute kid, a feisty Latina stowaway throws tantrums and, oddly, Richard Dreyfuss camps lightly as dumped gay man (ah, the nurturing maternal character, do you see?). Josh Lucas as Dylan does conflicted hero like a creepy starey-eyed Paul Newman, Kurt Russell muscles about as a craggy ex-fireman (filmic self-reference, anyone?) and everyone else just gets on with it. Of special note is Kevin Dillon as ‘Lucky Larry’, a sleazy lounge-singer lookalike who seems bizarrely to have slouched in out of a John Waters movie purposely to trigger upset.
So there are no new tricks, the script’s a bit lame and the actors don’t captivate. Get over it. Poseidon on the IMAX screen is truly breathtaking. While the publicity focuses on the enormous wave, it is really the CGI’d opening shot that stuns, as we start underwater, then swoop up and around the ship’s outside, pausing to run with Lucas. Then we go on over the top and around to see the – gasp – luxury balconies, the – ooh – multiple swimming pools, the aah – views of the seascape sunset. Later on, there’s the running and the screaming and there are Big Things Falling With a Whump. And they fall a long way on that screen. There’s fire, there’s water, there are great lumps of creaking metal toppling slowly with increasing momentum. This film was made for IMAX. Poseidon gets going ten minutes in and don’t stop until the credits roll. It won’t bring you a new awareness of the nature of humanity, but it’s terrifying, it’s big and it’s loud. Go grab a girl (and/or boy) and fetch some popcorn. Summer’s here.
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