Poseidon

• Directed and Co-produced by Wolfgang Petersen
• May 6, 2006 (Tribeca) / May 12, 2006 (US)
• Based on Paul Gallico’s 1969 novel The Poseidon Adventure and the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure

On New Year’s Eve the luxury liner Poseidon is struck by a rogue wave and now a small group of passengers struggle to survive.

I came into Poseidon viewing it purely as a remake of a classic disaster film. I finished it viewing it is something unto itself. It takes the same basic premise of the original film as well as the book and manages to be something all its own which is a rare thing with the vast number of reboots/reimaginings/remakes we get these days. The story itself embodies much of the original film but executes those elements in a completely different way.

There are a few fake outs that imply they are going to go the same route here or there as the previous film but then immediately change things up. Normally that might feel like a bait and switch but somehow that allows this to feel like its own movie. They even go so far as to have a singer (Fergie) who I thought was going to belt out a modern version of “The Morning After” but does not instead choosing an original song.

The story starts off quiet and simple by just introducing the characters in much the same way as classic disaster films do. Things are fairly mundane but interesting enough to hold your attention. Then abruptly everything changes. There is very little lead up to the wave which flips the vessel which when you think about it adds a bit of authenticity to things.

We have a conflicting cast of characters that are either oddly suited or poorly ill-equipped for the situation. There is former New York City Mayor and firefighter Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) who is traveling with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend Christian Sanders (Mike Vogel) to New York, Navy submariner-turned-professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), newly single architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) who is pining for his ex-boyfriend, widowed Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), stowaway Elena Morales (Mia Maestro) who is travelling secretly with waiter Marco Valentin (Freddy Rodriguez), and gambler Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon). Read that list and you get a good idea of the likely survivors.

I think Poseidon is surprisingly good. Nobody really phones it in or gives a halfhearted performance here but then again we have a largely good cast of actors. They give you just enough that you are interested in what happens and when the abrupt death occurs or just when you know it’s coming and it’s not abrupt it packs a punch.

I won’t list all who make it to the end but of those characters one of the ones that does make it to the end is Richard Dreyfuss’s Richard Nelson and that bothers me. In the context of things others far better able to survive do not. I liked his character and he probably had some of the deeper emotional moments as a character but the thing is in the overall narrative Richard did very little if anything at all to aid in the survival of the group. He was deadweight that followed close enough behind to benefit from the good fortune of the group. Watch the movie and you will see. He does squat.

Poseidon benefits greatly from CGI. While The Poseidon Adventure was forced to use practical effects given the era. This is a largely CGI affair but done in such a way to just tell the story. While there are plenty of eye-popping visuals, there is not so much that your brain begins to think how fake it all is. Petersen uses just enough to tell the story only.

Petersen did something that honors the source material but also stands on its own that is a tense film from start to finish. It is fun and exciting. It is bold and excessive with heavy helpings of melodrama.

Poseidon is a great version of a previously done story. It has action and thrills. Most importantly it does not suffer from association to previous iterations. This is certainly something action and thriller fans will enjoy!