Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Poseidon

Question: What is one recent example of a good ocean-based disaster movie that is engaging and thrilling?

Answer: The Perfect Storm

Wolfgang Petersen is a director who seems to know the oceans and their dangers and is someone whose career seemed tightly wound around this theme. He, of course, became famous of Das Boot and the film helped him cross over to Hollywood. And having made a perfect example of how an ocean disaster film ought to be made, he has now provided an example of how NOT to make an ocean disaster movie. And that film is Poseidon.

Poseidon is a remake of the oldie The Poseidon Adventure. I can basically summarise the entire plot of the film in one line: On New Year's Eve, the luxury ocean liner, Poseidon, capsizes after being swamped by a rogue tidal wave and the survivors are left to fight for survival as they attempt to escape the sinking ship. That's it.

Now I enjoy action pictures and understand that the plots are nothing more than clotheslines on which action setpieces are hung. That's not a problem. But I do demand one thing: The film should at least supply me with characters whom I can/should care about/root for or at the very least, plausible characters whom I can see and understand. Do not patronise me with cardboard cutouts with as much personality as an amoeba. Yet, this is exactly what Poseidon gave me.

I can list out the list of characters (and the actors) for you: They are Dylan (Josh Lucas), an ex-navy seaman whom I have no idea what he is doing now; Robert (Kurt Russell) and Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), a rich former NY mayor who is an ex-firefighter and whose wife has left him and his daughter; Maggie (Jacinda Barrett) and Conor (Jimmy Bennett), (usually) anxious mother and son; Richard (Richard Dreyfuss), architect of the ship or maybe some other ships; Christian (Mike Vogel), Jennifer's boyfriend and soon-to-be husband; Lucky Larry (Matt Dillon), obnoxious rich man and Elena (Mia Maestro), a stowaway.

And that is all you need to know about them because that's also probably all you'd know about them anyway. And from the list alone, you should know who survives and who doesn't...after all, the irritable always dies and a hero got to sacrifice himself at the end for the good of all...altough I have to confess I actually wished more amongst this group had perished.

As for the action itself, there are passable setpieces on offer that is reasonable fun ( I can't name them because I actually can't remember them) but I am curious about something. Petersen shoots these action scenes without too much tension, allowing the characters to pass through them relatively easily. I almost feel like he couldn't be half-arsed at milking even a little more excitement out of the whole predicament. So the question I had for myself is: If the director was not interested in the situations in which he has placed his characters in, how can and why should I be interested?

At the end of the day, is it a good popcorn summer flick? I hesitate to say that. It is passable and if you really haven't got anything better to watch (or do), maybe, just maybe, you might want to catch it. But otherwise, I can't really recommend a movie where I thought that the film would not suffer even if the ending did not have any survivors at the end. I actually felt it wouldn't have made a difference at all. After all, we are looking at thousands of other stock characters drowning and burning to death and we are supposed to care about these few colourless individuals surviving the ordeal?!

When Roger Ebert reviewed Poseidon, he used one word to describe the film: Perfunctory. I can completely agree with that. But I also have another word to add: Unnecessary. It was unnecessary to make such a by-the-numbers blockbuster just to fill up the summer calendar and it is also unnecessary for audiences to catch it.

5/10