Most of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies have Poseidon Adventure stories. Mine involves a 13-year-old acquaintance who shouted, “Shelley Winters dies!” to the people waiting in line. Also, I honed my critical skills pondering why the Rev. Gene Hackman ordered all the dishy women to rip off the lower halves of their dresses (ostensibly so they could climb ladders more efficiently) but didn’t say anything to Shelley. What if her dress got caught on some twisted hunk of metal? Huh?
The poster for the 1972 Poseidon Adventure boasted of all the Oscar winners in the huge cast (Hackman! Winters! Ernest Borgnine! Red Buttons!), whereas the remake, Poseidon, just has Richard Dreyfuss. Still, these actors—Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett—look like they’re trying harder: At prices like this ($160 million), it would be unseemly to show their embarrassment. The director, Wolfgang Petersen, made his name with the harrowingly subjective Das Boot. He doesn’t have the square, impersonal style of the original’s Ronald Neame; he means business. So once you get past the clunky exposition, the film becomes intense and rather sickening. The characters on the upended luxury liner that get mashed and drowned and electrocuted—and almost everyone does; the body count is gargantuan—aren’t as expendable this time out. As a humanist, I applaud the respect for life, but I miss the campy fun. The movie is, in all senses, a big downer.
Well, there are unintentional laughs, like when the captain (Andre Braugher) shushes the bloodied survivors to reveal that the ship was hit by a “rogue wave.” (The passengers nod appreciatively.) But Petersen doesn’t exploit the upside-down setting. There are no urinals on the ceiling—just one gray corpse-strewn chamber after another. You pass the time guessing who’s in line to get it next. One character I was sure would make it is shockingly deep-sixed; another I figured would die does—but in a nightmarish close-up.
The actors outclass the script, although Rossum—the waterlogged ingénue of The Day After Tomorrow—might want to pass on any Earthquake or Towering Inferno remakes: How much inane disaster-pic dialogue can a single doe-eyed lass survive? Lucas plays the noncommittal gambler protagonist a mite noncommittally, but I wouldn’t wish his lines on anyone. As a gay businessman freshly abandoned by a young lover, Dreyfuss grows and becomes affecting, and Kurt Russell—who really ought to have an Oscar for something—is effortlessly convincing as an apprehensive dad. As a former New York mayor, though, he’s implausible: The idea of a non-freak in that office is so 1972.
Poseidon
Directed by
Wolfgang Petersen.
Warner Bros. PG-13.
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