Film Review: Poseidon

Poseidon

Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Emmy Rossum, Richard Dreyfuss, Mia Maestro

A disaster - a wet, soggy, awful mess. For all of the pointlessness of Dreyfuss' three or four whole sentences of total dialogue, the improbability of two firemen winding up in the same group , the implausability of the only people they meet alive in the entire journey through the ship being a group with the lead actor's daughter, the death of the non-whites, the tedium and anti-climactical ending... for all that... it was still crap.

The characters are crude and under-developed, the story (beyond a group getting to the top of an upside down ship) is non-existent, the lines are as if poorly (and humourlessly) translated from Petersen's native German. Acclaimed for the WWII submarine epic Das Boot, Petersen can only manage a muted echo ping of Das Booring with this remake of the "original" disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

The claustophobia is occasionally present as are elements of trauma and tension; but never enough for us to overcome indifference towards this group of roughly sketched people. Some of the set-piece scenes are just too long, too predictable and too choreographed and well lit to convey the necessary terror. There are big sets, big spills, explosions and action scenes; but so has every Hollywood schmovie - so what? The feeling at the end of this film was a resounding consensus of "Oh, is that it, then?" Best viewed when it comes out on TV - in the ad breaks of your preferred channel that is. You won't miss a thing.

1.5/5 stars