Poseidon review

This is a disaster movie in every sense of the word. Not only does it involve the capsize of a luxury cruise liner, but it also possesses no story, one dimensional characters, appalling dialogue and some truly bad acting.

Director Wolfgang Petersen obviously has a thing about water. After his submarine saga Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, he has returned to the sea for a remake of 1972's The Poseidon Adventure. But unlike the original, which at least made some gestures towards a plot and characterization (who can forget the glorious Shelley Winters?), Petersen and writer Mark Protosevich have unashamedly abandoned any such distractions. Instead they launch from one perilous situation to the next, presumably in the hope that the audience doesn't have a moment to realize that it's all nonsense.

Drawing obvious comparisons with Titanic, Poseidon lacks the scope of the all-time box office champ. Titanic conveyed the grandeur and scale of a floating palace, while the claustrophobic Poseidon feels like it's set in a boiler room. Water is the bad guy as it chases our variety pack of heroes through a labyrinth of chambers and corridors following the capsize of the liner at the hands of a 150ft rogue wave.

Poseidon possesses many of the staples of its genre including impressive effects and a character who just happens to be an expert in all things connected to their predicament. In this case it's the good time gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) who conveniently knows the intimate workings of a cruise liner. With hundreds already dead, he defies the captain's order to remain in the ballroom and heads up to what is now the hull. Sensing Johns as their only hope of escape, several passengers follow him. There's one-time fireman and ex Mayor of New York Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), his daughter (Emmy Rossum), her boyfriend (Mike Vogel), a single mom (Jacinda Barrett) and her boy (Jimmy Bennett) and Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) a wealthy gay man whose recently been spurned by his lover.

The second tier cast has little to help its cause, having to utter such lines as, "It's just dead people, right?" and "There's nothing fair about who lives and dies." The only memorable performance is that of Kevin Dillon who plays sexist spiv Lucky Larry, and then only because of how spectacularly bad it is.

To its credit Poseidon's unrelenting action imbues it with a certain guilty pleasure. It's not a question of being so bad it's good. It's not. It's truly bad. But the sheer brazen enormity of its failings is impressive.

Kevin Murphy