The Other Sinking Ship Movie
Poseidon Focuses on Peril Not People

I have been known, on occasion, to say that movies take too long to get into the action. I have sat through long films that seemed to use the first hour and a half to set up a brief, but exciting ending. In Poseidon, however, the reverse is true. The film takes no time at all to jump into the expected disaster. As a result, it's difficult to care about the characters.

Poseidon
Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell, left) and Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) help fellow survivor Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) up an elevator shaft in the disaster film Poseidon. (Warner Bros., 2006)
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Written by: Mark Protosevich (screenplay), based on the novel by Paul Gallico
Starring: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Jacinda Barrett, Richard Dreyfuss, Jimmy Bennett, and Emmy Rossum

Rated PG-13 (for intense prolonged sequences of disaster and peril)
Running time: 99 min.

FilmGuru's Rating : 6 out of 10.

Watching the start of Poseidon reminded me of being a kid and watching The Love Boat on Saturday nights. It begins with a quick jump around the ship to introduce characters, however briefly. Kurt Russell is a conservative father who disapproves of his daughter's (Emmy Rossum) boyfriend (Mike Vogal). Richard Dreyfuss is a man who has recently been dumped by his gay lover. Josh Lucas is a professional poker player who has made acquaintances with a single mom (Jacinda Barrett) and her son (Jimmy Bennett).

Soon it is midnight on New Year's Eve, and all the passengers are dancing in a giant ballroom being serenaded by Stacy Ferguson (made up to look remarkably like Charo). The party has drawn together most of the principle cast, including the captain (Andre Braugher) who makes the New Year's toast.

Before you can say "Happy New Year" disaster strikes, and a large rogue wave slams into the ship, turning it upside down. From that moment on, the film is a survival story as several of the passengers leave the "safety" of the sealed ballroom to try and find a way off the ship. Luckily, the group includes Dylan Johns (Lucas), who was in the U.S. Navy, and Robert Ramsey (Russell) who was a firefighter and former New York mayor.

The film plays out with a number of obstacles for the group of passengers to overcome, from crossing an empty elevator shaft to climbing a narrow ductwork. For those, like me, who have a bit of claustrophobia, the film was a nightmare of out-of-breath scenarios. Yet, by the end of the film I could not recall a single scene that wowed me. Some scenes were intense, but I never had a "I can't believe they managed to get out of that" moment.

I don't think it's a spoiler to suggest that only some people survived, but I won't say who. By the middle of the film, it had become apparent that no surprises were left in the story. One by one, those who were fated to die did so. (My wife tagged the first one, whispering to me that he might as well be wearing a red shirt from a Star Trek episode.) When someone does die, there's no sorrow for the other characters or the audience. Really, why should there be? We didn't know them.

Kurt Russell's character Ramsey said "There's nothing fair about who lives and who dies." Yet, disaster movies often fall into the trap of setting up heroes who won't be killed off because they're the star, they're too young, too old, or in love. There's occasionally one sacrifice that manages to surprise audiences, but it's the kind of surprise that in hindsight is really no surprise at all. The disaster film genre needs to take risks and treat characters like real people. In real life, it's not always the beautiful people who survive.

While the film has spectacular special effects, the story is lost amid the shipwreck. It may be more realistic to avoid long-winded dialogue in the face of imminent peril, but the characters become nothing more than stereotypes. The story falls apart in the final act, stretching credibility to an extreme. One near miss after another makes it obvious that most of the big names will survive. Nevertheless, finding a raft floating in the water when they finally make it out of the ship made me throw up my hands in disbelief.

For a disaster movie Poseidon is remarkably brief. At just over 90 minutes, the film is practically a sprint. I am a big believer that action/adventure movies should never be less that two hours. A good film needs three acts of equal length to tell it well. I believe that if Poseidon had beefed up the first act to better introduce the characters, it would have been a more reasonable length.