Whenever there is a new disaster movie in the cinemas, and it flops, I hold my breath. Insanely expensive disaster movies belong to my favorite types of movies, and I always worry that big losses for one of the movies in the genre will spell the end for pictures involving small groups of people bonding together to try and survive the worst things that can happen to them. Poseidon's dissapointing box office does not bode well for the future of the genre, but the movie itself is not to blame for it. Because Poseidon is a lot of fun to watch, with good acting, great effects and some scenes that had me shuffling anxiously in my seat, which is exactly what makes these movies so much fun to watch.
There's a party going on aboard the Poseidon, a huge cruise ship on a voyage to celebrate New Years Eve. The rich guests feast on expensive food and booze, gamble away their money or show their stuff on the dancefloor, unaware that all the festivities are about to come to a watery end. A huge 'rogue wave' capsizes the ship, killing hundreds of guests and trapping the rest of them in what must surely be a watery grave. The captain of the ship commands everybody to stay in the ballroom, which can be sealed off, and to wait there for a rescue team to come and get them. Professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) doesn't fancy his chances in the ballroom and decides to try and find another way out. Even though he is a loner, and initially plans on going at it solo, he soon has a small group of other survivors with him. They're a diverse bunch of people, including a former Mayor of New York (Kurt Russell), his daughter and boyfriend (Emmy Rossum and Mike Vogel), a stowaway (Mia Maestro), a mother and her son (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy Bennett), a suicidal gay man (Richard Dreyfuss) and a waiter from the ship's restaurant (Freddy Rodriguez).
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When the ship gets wrecked by the wave, you see this in the smallest possible detail, making you have to stop the urge to reach for the nearest lifevest.
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As happens in movies like this, their trip is not an easy one. The rogue wave has turned the ship into a disaster area, and the fact that everything is now upside down does not make things easier. As can be expected, not everybody survives, some of the characters meeting grisly ends and some others only narrowly avoiding the same fate. It's all fairly standard disaster movie stuff, no real surprise since this is essentially a remake of the granddaddy of all disaster movies, 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, but several elements make this movie a memorable one. For starters, there are the amazing effects. When the ship gets wrecked by the wave, you see this in the smallest possible detail, making you have to stop the urge to reach for the nearest lifevest. But regardless of the scope, this is also a surprisingly personal movie. The characters are genuinely likeable, and as the movie went on and the situations got hairier, I started crossing my fingers, hoping not everybody would be killed off. This is a crucial element of any disaster movie. If you have characters that nobody cares about, the only fun you get is from seeing them killed off as horribly as possible, but if you actually like the unlucky few, then you start living the events with them.
And their displeasure is brought to life in a very intimate way. There is a scene where the group tries to escape to a higher level through an air vent, which is only wide enough to barely let them through. As the water rises, and the people at the bottom of the vent start to slowly dissapear underwater, you will get an urge to shout at the people at the top of the vent, who are frantically trying to unscrew a hatch, to hurry up already. There's a lot of discomfort going on in this movie, and you feel every bit of it. Which is exactly what seperates good disaster movies from the bad ones.
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