Poseidon
As the passengers and crew on the luxury cruise liner Poseidon celebrate the New Year, the ship is suddenly struck by a rogue wave that tilts the massive vessel upside down. The remainder of the film follows a small band of survivors who leave the supposed safety of the ship's ballroom, so they can find their way upward through the wreckage of the ship, hoping to find a path to the outside world. Our brave group includes former New York Mayor Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russel), his adult daughter Jennifer (Emily Rossum) and her fiance Christian (Mike Vogel), ladies man Dylan (Josh Lucas), single mother Maggie (Jacinda Barrett) and her prerequisite cute kid son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), stowaway Elena Gonzalez (Mia Maestro), and tragic gay lover Richard (Richard Dreyfus) who has just lost the man he loved to another.
Quite honestly, the screenplay by Mark Protosevich does not care about the characters. They all get maybe a minute or two of introduction, and then the wave hits, and they're forced to band together. The movie is solely interested in being a nonstop special effects thrill ride. I must admit, the technical wizardry in this movie is most impressive. The actual disaster that turns the Poseidon from a luxury liner into a floating death trap is probably one of the most tense and horrific moments we're likely to see at the movies all summer. It is a beautifully crafted scene of horror, and the film wastes little to no time in getting to the sequence, since it knows that it's what the audience has come to see. It's the one moment of the film that truly stands out. Although the movie never quite sinks under its own weight (pardon the pun), it does just kind of float there, setting up plenty of dangers for our small band of heroes to face, but never quite topping the initial excitement and genuine thrills of the first 20 minutes.
What follows after the initial chaos is a group of underdeveloped characters played by highly paid actors who get really wet, severely injured, and struggle for survival. We never quite develop any sort of emotional response with anyone in the group, because the movie keeps us at a distance from them, opting instead to focus solely on the technical aspects of the story. Fortunately, there is a method to the madness. Wolfgang Peterson knows how to helm the film in such a way so that it never becomes too noisy or tedious, despite the fact that the movie is literally a nonstop 85-minute action sequence after about 15 minutes of shallow set up. In the wrong hands, Poseidon is a movie that I could easily see becoming annoying and quite quickly, and although it never quite captivates, it does hold some entertainment value throughout. It's fast-paced, never centers on a certain danger for far too long, and doesn't really give you time to complain. It's only when you're thinking back on the movie that you start to realize that there wasn't a whole lot up there on the screen. Those looking for light junk food for the brain entertainment are those who are most likely to be entertained by Poseidon.
The film has managed to round up a fine cast, but since the characters are so underdeveloped to the point of almost non-existence, it's kind of hard to rate their performances. I guess for a disaster movie like this, the best way to judge is if their fear was believable, and if they were able to pull off their multitude of stunts. Grading solely on these merits, the cast does extremely well. Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas play the "leader" roles of the group, and fill their parts with the proper amount of authority and strong presence. The rest of the group pretty much do what is expected of them. The women act scared and sob a lot for most of the running time, the cute kid character keeps on getting in trouble and wandering off, and the gay man pretty much stays in the background the entire time, because he's played by Richard Dreyfus, and he knows that he's too good for this material. The group at least work well together, and no one got on my nerves. The characters that are annoying (like a surly drunk who joins the group for a short time) are appropriately and expectedly wiped out mere moments after they enter the film. We learn so little about the characters, unfortunately, that it's hard to feel anything when the screenplay asks us to sympathize with them. There's an odd moment in the ballroom when the ship's ballroom singer hugs a man right before a disaster strikes. This is supposed to be a tender moment, but since the movie has not even bothered to develop her as a character (not even bothering to tell us up until now that this man was important to her), it comes across more as awkward than sentimental.
In a way, I admire that the filmmakers did not try to make this movie out to be more than what it's supposed to be. It's a special effects disaster film, and does not pretend to be anything more than that. Poseidon is exactly what you would expect. It's just a bit too shallow for its own good. It's obviously well done, and has a couple successful scenes, and then it's over, and you go on with your life. It's a time killer of a movie that serves its purpose but not much more than that. Hopefully there are some more memorable potential blockbusters on the way this summer. Poseidon manages to stay afloat thanks to its technical wizardry, but there's not much holding it up.
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