POSEIDON

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Blood In The Blue Room
Wolfgang Petersen Terrifies With Remake of Disaster Movie Prototype

By Cole Smithey

From Wolfgang Petersen’s majestic 360-degree pan of the enormous modern-day luxury cruise ship that will be capsized by a 150-foot tidal wave, to his deliberately caliginous closing shot, "Poseidon" is a nerve-wracking thrill ride.

All fears of it being yet another abysmal Hollywood remake are waved aside as character traits are economically mapped out in the moments before the film’s pivotal New Year’s Eve disaster.

Mark Protosevich’s better-than-average script fits like a hand-in-glove with Petersen’s ("Das Boot") masterful detailed direction emphasizing the claustrophobic debris-filled environment that a handful of characters suffer while climbing toward the ship’s overturned hull in hopes of escaping before it sinks. The selfish and selfless duality of its survivors comes across in very different ways.

Professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) wins a significant hand of poker against former New York Mayor Robert Ramsey (well played by Kurt Russell) in the ship’s Main Ballroom. Ramsey’s intractable daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) has just gotten secretly engaged to her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel) even as Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), a recently jilted gay architect, contemplates suicide seconds before witnessing the vast approaching tidal wave. In a matter of seconds the colossal swell hits the ship broadside.

The movie takes on a nightmare quality of epic proportions. Hundreds of lives are instantaneously lost to millions of gallons of water hitting the boat in fearsome scenes that push you back in your chair. Electrical fires spark, beams fall, and an elevator ejects its passenger as chaos reigns and death pervades.

Caught between staying in the comparative safety of the Main Ballroom, where Captain Bradford (Andre Braugher) has ordered survivors to remain, Dylan — a former firefighter — ignores the command and starts climbing away from the crowd. Inspired by Dylan’s decisiveness, nine-year-old Conor brings his mother Maggie to follow the stalwart leader to imagined safety. Our core group’s journey encompasses the bulk of the story. It challenges the audience to empathize with the daring, cowardly, or drastic decisions of a diverse group of protagonists.

Integral to the group is Valentin (Freddy Rodriguez), a young Latino ship’s waiter, and his stowaway immigrant friend Elena (Mia Maestro). Rodriguez plays his likable character without affectation, thus adding to the ever so delicate political subtext that screenwriter Protosevich pinpoints. Elena is claustrophobic. You never doubt that Elena is deathly afraid of what it will take to survive, but also of her eventual fate if she does because of her "alien" status. Valentin and Elena serve a significant function in the film because they sharply snap the story out of the cliché-laden domain of the original film ("The Poseidon Adventure" -1972).

Josh Lucas handles his character’s heroic duties with an uninhibited commitment that displays the actor’s ever-expanding range. There’s nothing jokey or smug in his portrayal. You sense Lucas's respect in his onscreen chemistry with Kurt Russell. Russell, who wrote the book on Poseidon’s brand of iconic hero in disaster movies like "Escape From New York" and "Backdraft," consummates one of the film’s most unsettling underwater scenes with an Oscar-quality performance that galvanizes the movie as an instant classic.

Composer Klaus Badelt’s ("Gladiator") pitch-perfect score works like an invisible gear within the film’s clockwork to increase its at times nearly unbearable tension. Aside from making James Cameron’s "Titanic" look like it was filmed in a bathtub, Wolfgang Petersen elevates the disaster movie genre by giving it a solid sense of how all disasters are created equal in human terms. It might not be as gripping as "Das Boot," but it is just as intensely entertaining.

Rated PG-13. 100 mins.