After viewing the new action film “Poseidon,” I found myself pondering what director Wolfgang Peterson’s motives were for making this film. It was obvious that a quality movie-watching experience was not his ultimate goal.
With a running time of barely 100-minutes, “Poseidon” puts its star-studded cast into watery chaos almost immediately, drowning any chance for character development or intelligent dialogue.
A soggy remake of the 1972 hit, “The Poseidon Adventure,” the movie has the same setup as the original. A luxury cruise liner filled with vacationers is capsized by an enormous and unpredictable “rogue wave” on New Year’s Eve. However, the new film lacks what made the original so appealing – the characters.
The new batch of cliché adventurers includes Kurt Russell as a former New York mayor, Emmy Rossum as his angst-ridden daughter, Mike Vogel as her boyfriend and Josh Lucas as a professional cruise ship gambler. Jacinda Barrett portrays a single mom, Richard Dreyfuss is a heartbroken gay architect, Mia Maestro plays a stowaway and Jimmy Bennett is a terrified little kid who manages to get lost in every scene. After the ship flips, they begin the obstacle course-style upward climb through water-logged rooms and demolished corridors to escape the vessel.
The watery antics include flash fires, explosions and extensive flooding, leaving the band of heroes to face one impossible situation after another; including an elevator shaft suspense sequence, a gasoline fire fountain and a really obnoxious girl (Maestro) who was too scared to move in every situation when time was of the essence.
As can be expected, many of the characters fall victim to Mother Nature’s fury in fairly gruesome ways: electrocutions, impaling, crushing, burnings and of course, a whole lot of drowning. But from the stock extras to the main characters, it seems the actors were limited to three key phrases: “We gotta keep moving up,” “We are going to die” and “Oh No!”
Intellectual stimulation aside, the special effects were top-of-the-line, not including the computer-generated 150-foot wave. The initial ship destruction was done well and was believable ignoring the fact that the entire situation is beyond the realm of reality.
The back-to-back action scenes make for a quite suspenseful movie-watching experience and of course, as with all action films, it was always entertaining to try to guess who was going to die next.
Bottom line: Viewers who remember when the Black-Eyed Peas made good music before Fergie joined the group are in luck. Her character dies a horrible watery death, but for the rest of movie-goers, who put away expectations for an Oscar and are looking for a fun no-brain-necessary summer movie, “Poseidon,” is a safe bet.
