POSEIDON Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Warner Bros
Grade: C
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Written by: Mark Protosevich, story by Paul Gallico
Cast: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Jacinda Barrett, Andre
Braugher, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum
Screened at: Warner, NYC, 5/3/06 “There is nothing fair about who lives and who dies,” philosophizes one members of the principal cast. That’s a statement subject to dispute. We may not know in advance which people will die, but we can be fairly certain that most of the principal cast will survive, with one sacrificed for heroism and for a stab at credibility. “Poseidon” is a disaster movie in the tradition of “The Towering Inferno,” leading us to rate the pic according to how well it communicates disaster. But to get across the tragedy of a cruise ship’s demise, we have to have enough information about the characters to care about them. Wolfgang Petersen’s (“Das Boot”) movie is a triumph of special effects over plot, characterization, lensing, ambiance and dialogue, but even in those regards, there is so much repetition of the water image that one can quickly tire of even the expensive mechanics. Water surrounds the passengers; it gushes inside the ship, its force having slowly cracked windows to the horror of the rich folks who at one table gamble so heavily that a single poker hand requires $40,000 per player to stay in the game. As for dialogue, “Poseidon” has three instances of the line that appears in just about every movie these days: “Are you OK?” (This spoken when a young man has his leg pinned beneath steel girders, for example, the rescuers almost ready to give up on saving his legs or even his life. Let no one, not even our enemies be “OK” like this guy.) “Poseidon” is the sort of movie in which an incident has its characters “changed forever,” as the cliche in many a movie production notes insist. What changes every last passenger on the doomed boat this time is not enemy fire but humankind’s most treacherous enemy: nature. A one hundred fifty-foot rogue wave approaches the Poseidon minutes after the dressed-to-the-nines crowd have celebrated the New Year on the open seas, and while the ship has an emergency system that alerts potential rescue vessels, there’s no one in sight for hours after the Poseidon rocks and rolls and tumbles upside down in the murky, endless body of water. While this is a remake of the 1972 movie “The Poseidon Adventure” from Paul Gallico’s novel by the same name, writer
Mark Protosevich has merely sketched in important facts about each of the principals, thereby enjoining us from caring too much about their fates. Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), a fabulously wealthy architect with everything seemingly going for him, is distraught. His male lover has dumped him, causing him to ponder suicide on the railing of the boat (though somehow he makes every attempt to save his own life later on, even kicking aside a member of the crew whose weight threatens to drop him into an abyss). Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), a one-time mayor of New York and former fire fighter, is watching over his daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rossum, from “Phantom of the Opera”), guarding her against taking too many liberties with her boyfriend, Christian (Mike Vogel). Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), a thief who’d carry your winter coat away if you left it on your seat in the movie theater to go to the john, gets a chance to redeem himself when heroism is called for, while the object of his fancy, Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) flirts briefly but spends most of her time worrying about the location of her bright young peripatetic son, Conor (Jimmy Bennett). All are under the watch of Captain Bradford (Andre Braugher), who spends more time as m.c. at the New Year’s festivities than watching out for rogue waves. The rest is water, water, everywhere–electrical flash fires burning out the lungs of some hapless passengers, girders falling helter skelter around others. No human dialogue can match that of Mother Nature, but in this case, Mark Protosevich goes over the border into camp. There are some impressive images, particularly the opener that shows a twenty-story high ship, presumably immune to any danger save nuclear arms, with thirteen decks including at least one suite of rooms that would be the envy of the George V hotel in Paris. Lovers of lavish spectacle would be wise to catch the pic on the big screen, particularly at an IMAX theater where it’s scheduled to open May 12. Rated PG-13. 98 minutes © 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
