DVD Reviews

Poseidon – Blu-ray Review

By Patrick Luce Apr 26, 2010, 15:01 GMT

into the ship and flips it upside down. A ragtag group of survivors realize their only chance is to make their way to the deepest bowels of the ship, now at the top, if they are going to have any chance of getting out. ...more

Wolfgang Peterson’s big-budget remake of Poseidon sails to Blu-ray looking sharp, but the film is still barely worth the ride. Although movies may look great on Blu-ray, it doesn’t make a mediocre movie suddenly great, and the Poseidon remake is mediocre at best.

With multiple viewings (I owned it on DVD and it seems to play on television a lot), the film has become somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, but it still has several flaws that keep it from being a truly great disaster movie or at least as good as the 1972 original. Its biggest problem is the lack of character development and its “out of the frying pan into the fire” formula.

The $160 million remake (which only made about $61 million at the U.S. box office) features an updated screenplay by Mark Protosevich loosely based on Paul Gallico’s novel. The film stars Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Kevin Dillon, and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.

The film follows the aftermath of the cruise ship Poseidon being struck by a rogue wave and flipping upside down, and the group of survivors that are forced to travel through the ship to hopefully find a way to escape. Their journey naturally makes them face a number of life and death situations and kills off several along the way.

The survivors are led by loner Dylan Johns (Lucas) – a gambler who quickly decides that he knows better than the captain – and Robert Ramsey (Russell) - a former firefighter and past former New York City mayor who has been through some kind of disaster before.

Ramsey pushes the group early on because he is desperate to find his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and then to get her to safety. The rest of the survivors seeking a way out include Maggie James (Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett); Jennifer’s boyfriend Christian (Vogel); Elena Gonzalez (Mía Maestro); Richard Nelson (Dreyfuss); and Lucky Larry (Dillon) – a nickname that telegraphs certain death for the character.

Although they seem to have no real clue how to escape the ship or even which way to go, they quickly head off into the ship’s bowels and make their way towards the propeller shaft – which they believe will have an exit.

Along the way, they face huge blazing fires, flooding water, huge climbing sequences, and a tunnel so tight they can’t go backwards to get back out. With all these great stunts you would think Poseidon is one hell of a thrill ride, but they actually become kind of boring after about the fifth one. Instead of making the film more thrilling, the never ending stunts make it tired and makes the audience care even less if the characters live or die – there are a few you are hoping will just die.

Part of the problem is that none of the characters are really developed at the start of the movie and instead are just kind of vaguely fleshed out in the opening moments. They all have some reason for being on the ship and some reason for wanting to live, but the audience is never really given a chance to care because so little time is spent on them.

Russell is concerned about his daughter (who also has a love interest in the film), but if you blink during a poker scene you will miss the whole part about him being a famous New York City Mayor who dealt with some kind of massive disaster. Lucas appears to be some kind of professional cruise ship gambler – which also makes him somehow perfect to navigate the group through the sinking ship. Barrett is on the boat with her son, but no husband, and Dreyfuss mentions having a boyfriend but it appears they broke up before the cruise.

The lack of good character development kills the film because one of its strengths is its great ensemble cast of character actors. With this cast, a little more time should have been spent on the script – even if it meant scrapping one more falling chandelier escape scene.

Regardless, it is clear the actors are not the star of the film. The star is the upside down boat and the big escape sequences Peterson and company force the audience to endure.

Sadly, the action sequences just aren’t enough to keep Poseidon afloat. The boat is massive, but it is never clearly defined just how big so there is no idea how far the group has come or how much more they have to go. This kind of kills some of the excitement because you are never too sure how close they are getting to freedom.

With that said, Poseidon does work for a guilty pleasure way of wasting a rainy Saturday afternoon or watching as a midnight movie when you just can’t get to sleep. The film does feature some good performances from its cast, and Peterson handles the massive scale of the story. The pace stays rushed so it doesn’t really demand any kind of attention be kept by the audience. It is simply a “turn your brain off and enjoy” kind of movie.

The Blu-ray release of the film is decent and a bit of an upgrade from the DVD release – although I didn’t notice a huge difference in the two versions. Its special features are the same as what appeared on the Two-Disc DVD release of the film.

Released in 2006, the remake of Poseidon has not gone on to become a classic of cinema, and is pretty much as good or bad as you remember it. It isn’t an awful movie, but it does require the audience to lower its expectations.