Poseidon Review

"POSEIDON" reviews

Movie

POSEIDON

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-05-26 15:33:02

Provider

Review

As one of the defining disaster movies of the Seventies, it was all but inevitable that The Poseidon Adventure would eventually be remade. Inevitable, too, that it would pale beside the tense original, if only because actors of the calibre of Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters are thin on the ground these days. What's more, where the 1972 flick explored the chilling impact of claustrophobia, Poseidon is less concerned with a storyline than using its actors as props in a big screen video game.

The characters, too, are all new, from Richard Dreyfuss's gay architect to Kurt Russell's Robert, the former mayor of New York. He is travelling with his stubborn daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), and her boyfriend, Christian (Mike Vogel), of whom Robert disapproves. Of the other passengers Dylan (Josh Lucas) is a good-for-nothing gambler who flirts with a single mum (Jacinda Barrett), while Elena (Mia Maestro) is a stowaway, who's intent on visiting her sick brother in New York despite her lack of funds.

When the wave strikes it is Dylan who assumes the role of leader, prompting a spot of male bonding with Russell's character. Dreyfuss too finds a friend in the shape of Elena, whose isolation he alone understands. But really, this is less about human interaction than emotional action scenes, of which there are several. A scene in which the cast is trapped inside a heating vent as the water rises is particularly harrowing.

Fine action scenes alone, though, aren't enough to save Poseidon from that great big screen grave on the ocean bed.

Copyright © 2006.