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The Poseidon Adventure (1972) was one of the first disaster flicks, along
with Airport (1970) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Given the technological
advances in visual effects made over the intervening years, it should come
as no surprise that this remake would represent a substantial improvement
over the first in terms of visual capture. Plus, director Wolfgang
Petersen’s approach was to overhaul the script by drastically reducing the
sappy chit-chat in order to transform the picture into a non-stop,
nerve-wracking misadventure.
As for the characters, they’re still little based on readily recognizable
caricatures. There’s the former Navy diver (Josh Lucas), the suicidal,
just-dumped, gay architect (Richard Dreyfuss), the clueless ship captain
(Andre Braugher), the frantic single mom (Jacinda Barrett), her resourceful,
nine year-old son (Jimmy Bennett), a disgraced ex-NYC mayor (Kurt Russell),
his recently-engaged daughter (Emmy Rossum), her world-class swimmer fiancé
(Mike Vogel), a pompous jerk (Kevin Dillon), the saloon singer (Stacy
Ferguson), the Latino stowaway (Mia Maestro), and her busboy confidante
(Freddie Rodriguez).
Playing like the Titanic but with all the emotional content left on the
cutting-room floor, Poseidon achieves in about an hour and a half what it
took that Oscar-winner over three hours to get around to. The tragedy
unfolds in the Atlantic on New Yea’s Eve aboard a cruise liner headed for
New York. At the stroke of midnight, the first mate signals the alarm when
he notices a rogue tidal wave headed straight for the boat.
This high-body count adventure kicks into high gear from here on in, never
allowing a moment to catch your breaths till the entombed ensemble of hardy
survivors finally bursts through the hull of the flipped ship to reach the
ocean’s surface. State-of-the-art f/x, but betrayed by a script as
superficial as the original’s.
Good (2 stars)
PG-13 for graphically-depicted scenes of disaster and intense peril.
Running time: 99 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
2-Disc
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August 2006
