Movie Review Poseidon

Poseidon (2006)

Directed by Wolfgang Peterson

Written by Mark Protosevich

Starring Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Mia Maestro

Release Date May 12th, 2006

Published May 11th, 2006

The 1972 original The Poseidon Adventure was a dopey all star marathon of water logged cheesiness. From Gene Hackman's turtleneck to Shelley Winters swimming, to Red Buttons closeted fabulousness, there is nothing but pure camp fun to be found in this ludicrous disaster epic.

This is why I was not so vehemently opposed to the film being remade. I find it refreshing to find filmmakers leaving the classics alone and attempting to make a bad movie into a good one. The attempt is a miserable failure but at least we aren't left with a shot for shot remake of Psycho haunting video store shelves as the shame of shame.

Poseidon stars Josh Lucas as an inveterate gambler named Dylan who boards the ocean liner Poseidon looking for rich victims to play poker with. Dylan cares about no one but himself, so, of course, when the supposedly unsinkable ship is flipped by a freakishly large wave it is Dylan who must lead potential survivors to safety.

Why Dylan and not, say, the former Mayor of New York and hero fireman Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell)? Probably because Lucas is younger, better looking and studios think he is a star on the rise. At Least that is the cynical answer. The plot however says that Dylan is simply luckier in finding conveniently placed maps of the ship that he uses to find the one spot where people can escape.

Along for the ride, as cannon fodder mostly, are Robert's daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) her fiancee Christian (Mike Vogel), single mom Maggie (Jascinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), Richard (Richard Dreyfuss) a suicidal gay man and Elena (Mia Maestro) a stowaway.

Together they navigate the upside down ship through fiery galleys, explosions above and below and most perilous of all some of the worst dialogue ever enunciated by professional actors in a major motion picture.

The first Poseidon had some serious cheeseball dialogue, especially from Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens as the bickering Roggo's, a pairing that has seen more than one brilliant send up on The Simpsons. Unfortunately even Borgnine and Stevens would be embarrassed by the kind of tripe served up as meaningful dialogue in the new Poseidon.

As an example, check the exchange between Richard Dreyfuss's inappropriately flamboyant Richard and Freddie Rodriguez's Marco as poor Marco is navigating a particularly dangerous corridor. Richard picks this moment, as fire and steam and a quickly falling apart bridge threaten poor Marco, to come flying out of the closet and hit on Marco. It's bad enough to make one wonder if Marco chose the fiery depths of the inflamed water over survival. 

The exchanges between Kurt Russell, usually quite reliable even in a garbage picture, and Josh Lucas are just as ludicrous. Listen as Dylan establishes his rebel persona as Russell asks the question we all want to know as the ship begins to sink "Don't you care about anyone other than yourself!". No he doesn't, except maybe Maggie aka the plot device love interest put in place to humanize him, as if a flipped over cruise ship just were not enough motivation.

As bad as Poseidon is, director Wolfgang Peterson is far too talented to make a film so bad it's good. Thus we get some very competent action scenes and some exceptional CGI effects. These elements add up to nothing except incongruity. The competence feels out of place amongst the shoddy whole of Poseidon.

Forget about the media garbage that the disaster in Poseidon is anything akin to the real life disaster of the tsunami or that the passengers' escape is anything akin to watching people flee the twin towers on 9/11. Poseidon is far from a cheeseball for that kind of analysis. Even a wry allusion to these real life disasters in comparison to Poseidon feels crass.

After watching Sony try to sell us Josh Lucas as the hero of Stealth last summer and now watching Josh in Poseidon I've come to the conclusion that Josh Lucas is the New Coke of action heroes. We never asked for him, we don't know where he came from, all we know is that when we went for the new Schwarzenegger or Gibson all we could find on the shelf was this guy.

It's not that Lucas is a bad actor, he was terrific in the little seen dramedy Around The Bend with Christopher Walken, it may just be that action hero is not his thing. Much like his near twin brother Matthew McConaughey, Lucas has that lackadaisical, laid back slacker thing going on. It's an affectation that just does not play in the macho genre but suits him well in movies like An Unfinished Life or his small role in A Beautiful Mind.

As for Kurt Russell in a better movie he could have been a very effective lead. Unfortunately, saddled with a script that gives him one note to play, protective father, he cannot escape the dreariness around him. For me he was the film's most entertaining player but only because during the many, many moments of boredom in Poseidon I would drift off and imagine what Snake Plissken would do on an upside down, exploding boat. I imagine there would be alot of killing and at least one scene of Snake lighting a cigar off of a flaming corpse. Call it Escape From The Exploding Upside Down Boat.

You know a movie stinks when you are dreaming of your own movie while watching it.

It is the rare disaster epic that makes you root for the disaster. Poseidon is that disaster epic.

Movie Review: Troy

Troy (2004) 

Directed by Wolfgang Peterson

Written by David Benioff

Starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Peter O'Toole

Release Date May 14th, 2004

Published May 13th, 2004 

In this day and age, when you say Homer everyone thinks Simpson. It wasn't always that way. Years ago, colleges turned out erudite intellectuals who quoted the great poet Homer from "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey.” Maybe those people still exist but today more people can quote Homer Simpson than Homer the poet and the new Wolfgang Peterson epic Troy is not likely to change that. This bombastic, outsized blockbuster has the appeal of Brad Pitt and the scope of an age old epic but it lacks the soul of the poet who's work it attempts to revive.

Brad Pitt stars as Achilles, the greatest warrior in history. Though Achilles claims to have no allegiances, he fights for the money of King Agamemnon (Brian Cox). With Achilles’ sword, Agamemnon has conquered several kingdoms and his reach dominates the Greek kingdoms surrounding the Aegean Sea. Save for that of King Priam of Sparta (Peter O'Toole).

It seems that Sparta is unattainable even for someone as powerful as Agamemnon. Even the great king's brother Menelaus (Brendon Gleeson) has acceded that Sparta can't be taken, even going so far as to broker peace with King Priam's sons Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). The peace accord however is short lived when Paris takes a liking to Menelaus' wife Helen (Diane Kruger) and spirits her away to Sparta.

This development finally gives Agamemnon all the reason he needed to sack the last kingdom that stands in the way of his dominance. However, to take Sparta, a grand feat given Sparta's legendary impregnable walls, Agamemnon must once again call on Achilles to lead his armies. Achilles does not want to fight for Agamemnon no matter what the offer but does finally agree after a visit from his good friend Odysseus (Sean Bean) who promises something more valuable than riches, eternal glory.

That is the setup for massive CGI battles and a great deal of melodramatic speechifying. In all of the film’s nearly three-hour length there are pieces of three different full length movies edited together into Troy and only one of them would be any good. That is the story of Achilles who in the person of Brad Pitt is a charismatic and dangerous presence. Pitt's Achilles is powerful but conflicted and that makes him inherently dramatic. A film about Achilles would be terrific.

The story of Helen and Paris also has the potential as a stand-alone story. The story has love, passion and a great deal of drama. Cut up as it is here to make room for two other parallel stories, it loses impact. Helen is the reason that Sparta is about to be overrun in the greatest war of all time, therefore her importance to Paris needs more time to develop. Why would Paris risk his family and in fact an entire kingdom for her? We never really know. As it is in Troy, the love story comes off as the selfish petulance of a childish boy and his desperate crush.

The final story is the most poorly developed and that is the story of Eric Bana's Hector. It's not the fault of Bana who is a strong presence, nearly the equal of Pitt. Nearly. Hector's story is far more dramatic than what we see here. His conflicts with his father King Priam are given short shrift and Hector's only character traits are heroism. Hector is hardly ever conflicted, he has no great story arc. He begins as a hero and continues through the film as a hero beyond reproach.

In adapting Homer's epic poem, screenwriter David Benioff had to make a number of dramatic sacrifices including some I already mentioned and one that may be the most troublesome sacrifice of the film. In The Iliad, the Gods of Mount Olympus gave the conflict it's context, they provided motivation beyond the grandiose, nation chest-bumping that Agamemnon uses as motivation here. The meddling God's protected Achilles and gave his dramatic ending a bigger payoff.

There are two reasons for the excising of the God's from Troy. First, there just wasn't enough time to fit them in. The film is just too long to add any more characters, especially characters as outsized as the Gods. Secondly, and don't underestimate this one because this may be the real reason, the bad memories of Sir Laurence Olivier's screen chewing menace in Clash Of The Titans. Love or hate Clash, there is no denying the cheeseball nature of all of the scenes involving the Gods.

Director Wolfgang Peterson is a technician as a director. As his budgets have grown his love of technological filmmaking has overcome his sense of story and character. I say that as a criticism but I must also state that as a technician he is a terrific director. Technology however is not what is most appealing about a film. As George Lucas has shown, you can have all of the technology in the world and still not make a movie that engages. Dazzle the eye all day but if you can't reach the heart or mind, you have no movie. Brad Pitt engages both with his tremendous performance but little else in Troy rises to his level.