Poseidon (2006)
AKA: The Poseidon Adventure (2006)
2/3 rankings
Directed By: Wolfgang Petersen
Written By: Mark Protosevich, Paul Gallico (novel)
Produced By: Wolfgang Petersen
Tagline(s): Mayday...
| Starring: | |
| Josh Lucas | Dylan Johns |
| Kurt Russell | Robert Ramsey |
| Richard Dreyfuss | Richard Nelson |
| Kevin Dillon | Lucky Larry |
| Cool Line(s): | |
| Robert Ramsey | There's nothing fair about who lives and who dies. |
| ... | ... |
| Lucky Larry | You don't just get the name Lucky Larry ... you have to be LUCKY! |
Summary: A freak rogue wave capsizes the luxury ocean liner Poseidon. This wave appears without warning on New Year's Eve. Now a rag-tag group of survivors must make their way up to the bottom of the upside-down boat to make their way out to safety before sinking and drowning.
Review: Poseidon continues the tradition of great disaster movies. Start with a stellar cast, separate one small group (typically around ten people) off from the main group, and kill about half of the small group off in varied suspenseful ways as they make their escape. Sometimes not killing someone but have them survive briefly just to keep people guessing. Ensure that even some of the big-name actor star's characters die too, since disaster movies can't have sequels. And then rescue the remaining members of the small group in a spectacular way.
Having done all this, and having done it with great special effects, this should have been an all-time great disaster movie. This should have sparked resurgence in the great escape disaster genre. But it didn't. Why? Because the movie was about twenty minutes too short. Even in an edge-of-your-seat keep them guessing drama; you still need to set the back-story first. At no time did we learn anything about the boat except for its name, and we only learned one-sentence descriptions for each of the main characters throughout the movie, single-mom, alcoholic gambler, and rebellious teens in love, etcetera. What should have happened was we should have boarded the boat with the characters, got the welcome to out boat, the largest vessel of its kind speech, got the introduction tour; here's the gallery, the ball room, etcetera. Instead the movie starts with everyone already on board some big boat sailing somewhere, and the boat tour is mentioned past tense but never flash backed to.
Sure the special effects, for the most part, were awesome. The only scene that didn't ring true for me was the cgi'd rogue wave. Oh the rogue wave! And the flash fire was particularly believable. But what happened to the rest of the crew and passengers? Our hero group should have acted with renewed vigour to try and save them. Especially if they suspected something was happening back down below. Or they should have had a moment of silent mourning for them. Instead we just simply never see them again. And assuming your emergency flares are in short supply, who just sets one off in the middle of the ocean with no signs of anyone else, being around to see it? Shouldn't you wait until you see or hear rescue, then set it off to guide them in? And if you deliberately kill one of your rag-tag survivor mates, shouldn't you at least feel sorry for him?
All told, this movie was very good, with great special effects, great edge-of-your-seat will they or won't they breath-holding moments, but it just simply falls short of great. Add about twenty more minutes of back story to it, show us the rest of the passengers and crew tragically dying and you would have an awesome great escape disaster movie. But Wolfgang Petersen didn't.
To Purchase: Poseidon (2006) on DVD, Poseidon Soundtrack on CD, or Poseidon The Book in Paperback.
Please Note
Special Features: Two Disks, Behind the Scenes, Set Design, Documentaries, and Movie Commentaries.
Others in the Series: The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Copyright (c) 2006, 2008 A. Ryan Robbins. All Rights Reserved.
