Review: Poseidon

I felt a little apprehensive about seeing the new disaster flick about an overturned cruise ship, since I'm going to be on one in February, but after seeing Poseidon, I don't think I'll have to worry about it anymore. The best disaster movies, like say, Deep Impact (one note about the film, I love the fact that the big meteor, the one that was eventually blown up, was poised to land in Western Canada. BC gonna make some noise!), try to show us what could happen in the event of a major catastrophe, and what we, the regular people, can do to protect ourselves and our families. The not-so-best ones are like, say, The Core, where a bunch of improbable things happen and then a bunch more happen and then we all feel cheated. So, where do you draw the line between the limits of reality? When The Day After Tomorrow came out, there was a lot of jaw-wagging about global warming and how the events of the movie were not only possible, but probable. Yeah, like I'm sure the polar ice caps will all melt in the space of three days, followed two days later by a new ice age. I'll start stocking up on spam and toilet paper. The point is that these films are about "the unlikely event," as in, "In the unlikely event that a meteor is heading for Earth, how would you stop it?" So that brings us to Poseidon, which asks the question, "In the unlikely event that a rogue wave flips over a cruise ship, how would you escape?"

That question was first posed in 1972 in The Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, and Shelley Winters, which I assume back then was a star-studded cast. It was posed again last year on TV, but I won't go into that. This time, the answer is given by Josh Lucas, a McCaughnahey lookalike getting some real street cred here. Maybe now people will know him by his name, rather than "that guy from Sweet Home Alabama who's not Matthew McCaughnahey." And I hope I'm spelling his name right, because it's easy to get it wrong. That's another thing Josh Lucas has going for him. Anyway, Josh plays Dylan, a poker swindler making some money on a London-New York cruise on New Year's Eve. Joining him at the high-stakes table is Kurt Russell as Robert, a former fireman and mayor of New York. The movie spends a little time setting up the characters, but don't worry, because only 15 minutes in, the rogue wave slams into the ship from out of nowhere, flipping it upside-down and turning every thing not nailed down into a weapon. In the ensuing panic, a plan is hatched by Dylan, who mentions it in passing to Connor, a precocious little tyke, who tells his mother Maggie, who yells at Dylan, allowing everyone in the vicinity to hear the plan. That includes Robert, who is looking for his daughter (Emmy Rossum, who is already a veteran disaster flick actress), and Richard (Richard Dreyfuss), a gay architect who's just been dumped, and Marco (Freddy Rodriguez), a waiter with a secret. So this ragtag group of survivors starts heading upstairs, or downstairs or whatever, until they reach the hull. Along the way, they make and lose new friends. The good thing about the film is that you can't always predict who will and who won't survive, and sometimes you care if they make it, and sometimes you cheer if they don't. There's not a lot a character development at work in this film, and often you find yourself wondering how they all became so close so fast. But just do what I do, hit yourself in the head with a mallet, and just look at what's happening next.

I'm not going to go into detail about the hardships they endure, but suffice it to say, they remain wet for the entire time. When you take into account the fact that the director is Wolfgang Petersen, who also did The Perfect Storm and Das Boot, it's amazing anyone survived at all. And on a bright note, if you've ever wanted to see the Black Eyed Peas' Fergie hit by a wall of water, you'll get your wish, your dark and twisted wish. Ultimately, Poseidon is a film about sacrifice and dare I say it, the human spirit. I nearly gagged just typing that out. How far would you go to protect the ones you love, in the unlikely event?

∆∆1/2 of 5