Dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 2006, USA, 99mins
Cast: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum
Review by Mike Bartlett
After plundering ‘70s cinema and serving up pointless remakes of popular classics, an increasingly desperate Hollywood now resurrects the boring-people-shouting-at-each-other-in-small-places genre, aka the disaster movie. Just who would have thought we needed another Poseidon Adventure, you know, the one in which a boat capsizes and Shelley Winters tries to swim? And yet here it is. Only, this time, we’re not even given the protracted prologue in which we get to know the characters soap-opera style; so cynical is mainstream cinema now about the modern audience that they’ve shaved all that off and just cut to the chase – the big wave appears in the first reel! Which is true – we really want to see the CGI spectacle and loads of people getting killed – but if there are no personalities to follow in the first place, just why should we hang around after the initial cataclysm?
Well, I suppose the appeal of the disaster genre lies in that nagging question: just what would you do in this situation? How would you get off the boat? Now this may be counter-intuitive of me, but I’d head sideways, hoping to find a lifejacket and a breached window and float up to the surface. But these guys head up – towards the solid hull. I was scratching my head about this when I realised something else. In the aforementioned CGI spectacle, director Petersen and his special effects crew at least had the wit to highlight the true nightmare of this scenario – that the electrics would short and the lights would go out. Water rushing in, total darkness – the ultimate test. But for the rest of the movie, Kurt Russell and co wander round in quite nicely-lit sets, thank you very much. And we see loads of fire but no smoke, no toxic fumes choking the trapped passengers. What is the point of going to the trouble of recreating a disaster, with huge, expensive underwater sets, if you’re not even going to make it accurate?! It makes the whole question of how one would escape totally redundant.
Petersen has nothing to offer this genre. He seems to be trapped by the superficial way Hollywood producers judge foreign talent; most famous for making Das Boot (1981), he’s become the “guy who makes sea movies”, like The Perfect Storm (2000). Here, his fatigue and lack of interest are readily apparent. The only points of inspiration are the opening and closing shots, the first a blatant attempt to get one up on Titanic’s famous prow-to-stern CGI glide, and the latter a rather poetic play on the helicopter search lights come to the rescue. But in the emotional stakes, the film is a wreck. It’s clearly telegraphed who will die, so there’s no attempt to build up minor characters and therefore no suspense. There’s the usual hysteria which always brings out the sang froid Englishman in me (like Leslie Nielsen on that plane, I want to get slapping and shouting “Pull yourself together, woman!”) And worst of all is the utter selfishness of the survivors. As with all modern American movies, individuality is celebrated to the detriment of the group – don’t stay behind with those suckers, go off by yourself, despite what the captain says. I almost expected them to break out into a chorus of Dora The Explorer’s “We did it!” at the end, in a burst of self-congratulatory euphoria. I wish I could tell you that they all die – but they don’t. And after watching the movie, I felt as battered and bruised as they did when they emerged from the hull.
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