Troubled waters

The special effects are the only thing of value aboard 'Poseidon'

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 12, 2006 at midnight

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When a big wave flips a big ship, it can mean only one thing: Someone has decided to remake the 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure.

With director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) at the helm, Poseidon steams busily into the waters of summer. Although it generates intermittent tension, the movie leaves nothing substantial in its wake.

Many won't care because the movie loads up on bona fide summer ingredients: fiery explosions and vertiginous views down elevator shafts. And it should be noted that Poseidon includes several nicely engineered white-knuckle moments. If the movie doesn't sweep you away, it doesn't capsize either.

But Poseidon's not so purely realized or ultra-intense that it can get by without revving its emotional engines, and its problems start early. Take the big wave: The 150-foot boat-buster that turns the Poseidon on its head looks like a computer-generated effect, which doesn't make suspension of disbelief particularly easy.

The rogue wave strikes on New Year's Eve, when the ship's ballroom is full of revelers. The ship's captain (Andre Braugher) advises the surviving passengers to remain in the ballroom, which he wants to seal off, something about preserving the air supply. Help is on the way, he says. Yeah, and the ship will sprout wings and fly, too.

Sensing doom - or the need to get the action rolling - a hardy band of passengers tries to climb to the ship's hull. Forget dramatic conflict: There's little debate about who might be right, the captain or these few rebellious passengers.

In truth, none of the movie's conflicts carries much weight, and Petersen allows characterization to drown along with most of the passengers. What conflicts remain add little by way of genuine emotion to the proceedings. An overprotective father (Kurt Russell) refuses to let his daughter (Emmy Rossum) move gracefully into adulthood, for example.

Still, it's worth noting just who's booked on this cruise through waters strewn with special effects.

Richard Dreyfuss plays a gay architect who joins the quest for survival, although it's not entirely clear why. Before the wave hit, he was on the verge of committing suicide, having been dumped by his longtime lover.

Dylan (Josh Lucas), a loner who's supposed to care only about himself, leads the group trying to make it to the surface. But even his potential redemption from selfishness doesn't amount to much, perhaps because Petersen seems entirely committed to the idea that the movie's effects should do all the talking.

That's not an entirely bad approach, but it reduces the cast to generic status. Jacinda Barrett plays a mother who's trying to save her son (Jimmy Bennett), Mia Maestro portrays stowaway Elena, and Mike Vogel portrays Christain, the man who wants to marry Rossum's character.

Snippets of back story emerge - Russell's character once was mayor of New York City - but they aren't used in meaningful ways, and the actors, well, they're mostly all wet.

Not everyone makes it to the movie's finale, but there's little suspense about who will survive. And I can't say I cared all that much, anyway.

Is there a point? Not really. Poseidon isn't a story about the way nature can overwhelm us. It doesn't attempt to rebuke us for our technological hubris. It doesn't even seem all that interested in the fact that whole worlds can quickly turn upside down.

No one's looking for profundity in an effects-driven disaster movie, but Poseidon is just another summer thrill factory in which electric wires are torn from the walls and whip around rooms and in which action proceeds without any real sense of adventure or pathos. Many die, some live, pass the popcorn.

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