Fifteen minutes into Posiedon the boat gets flipped upside down. Then, over the course of the next hour and twenty minutes, every character in the film has their personalities turned upside down. I don’t know whom to credit (or blame as the case may be) for this development, director Wolfgang Peterson or screenwriter Mark Protosevich, but either way this plot-by-numbers is just no way to make a movie. I guess somebody thought it would be incredibly interesting and exciting if what happens to the boat is a metaphor for what happens to the characters. And that’s not actually unreasonable. The problem only arises because the film is little more than an exercise in seeing how many things the filmmakers can turn upside down.
Let’s count the ways. The loner hero (Josh Lucas, their character names are completely irrelevant) will, by the end of the film, be in love and wanting to start a family. The old gay man ready to die (Richard Dreyfuss) will discover a wonderful desire to live life to the fullest. A young woman (Emmy Rossum) who had written off her father as an ineffectual and distant dictator will finally realize just how much he really does love her. And then we have Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon playing Johnny Drama) who, before very long, discovers that he’s pretty damn unlucky.
See, the problem here is not so much that these people have had their lives turned upside down by the capsizing of the boat (that seems reasonable and somewhat logical) but rather that each character only has one trait. And reversing that one trait over the course of one hundred minutes is simply far too shallow (forgive me the pun) a character progression. Especially considering that anyone who’s ever seen a movie before in their lives would be able to figure out that the loner would fall in love or that the spiteful daughter would realize how much her father loves or that the idiotic Lucky Larry would prove to be unlucky. I’m not asking for Shakespeare but come on.
The only people that could possibly enjoy watching this film are those that really really like watching computer-generated fire. More so even than water, Poseidon is filled to bursting with scenes about or involving fire. It’s got flash fires, slow-burning fires, big fires, small fires, columns of fire, water on fire and even super-heated air that “burns your lungs like rice paper.” And most of this fire looks pretty damn cool. But then, of course, the silly humans that are trying to evade the fire have to do their thing and pretty soon you’ve got people diving headfirst (headfirst!) into a pool of burning oil and water or some such nonsense.
There are worse films (X-Men III, The Da Vinci Code, etc.) out there at the moment but hardly any that are this joyless. Blowing shit up and people holding their breath as they swim through flooded corridors whose length is unknown should be a lot more campy fun than this. It just looks like everyone involved was doing it for the paycheck.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Friday, May 12, 2006
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK – steven spielberg – 8.6 / 10
Although it’s been rechristened Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on the cover of the DVD, it’ll always be simply Raiders of the Lost Ark to me. I’ve seen this film almost ten times by now but every time I return to it I’m surprised by how good it is. Maybe that’s because of the less than stellar position Spielberg has in my estimation but then I suppose that would still be more my fault than his.
And to be sure it is easy to hate on this film. Because so much of what made it so intoxicating back in 1981 has been imitated and copied so many times since then that it’s easy to forget how unique the picture really was. The most duplicated element of the film must surely be the overall tone, more specifically the hero’s wry sense of humor in the face of life-threatening danger. This flippant manner, basically invented by Harrison Ford in Star Wars and perfected here, provided the template for the eighties action hero. Following in Indiana’s footsteps audiences were soon to be treated to John McClane, Cobra Cobretti, John Rambo, etc. on down to Vin Diesel’s XXX. And mostly because of these lesser imitators, this ironic detachment from the danger the hero faces has come to represent everything that was wrong with the action film in the eighties and nineties. But that’s not the fault of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And if you as a modern viewer can see past all that extratextual weight, you’ll be treated to a rare cinematic treat,
The most noteworthy plot element in this film is just how often (and consistently) Indiana Jones fails. In the opening sequence Indiana swipes a sacred idol from some South American jungle only to have it swiped by the evil Beloq. Once the plot proper begins, Indiana is responsible for the destruction of Marianne’s bar, loses her to the bad guys in Cairo, finds and loses the Ark in the desert and on a boat. Even at the climax of the film, Indiana fails. His ultimate victory comes when he is tied up to pole. It’s hardly the resounding victory you’d expect.
Although all the failures that have lead us to this final moment were fun and everything, this last “failure” does strike the wrong note. Maybe it's the modern perspective from which I'm writing about this film but the fact that the hero's triumph comes from doing absolutely nothing is pretty anticlimactic. In fact, it's really the only sour note in the whole film. Unfortunately it happens to come at the very end of the movie and thus can leave you thinking it wasn't as good as it really was. Maybe that's the reason I'm surprised by how good this film is every time I put it on.
And to be sure it is easy to hate on this film. Because so much of what made it so intoxicating back in 1981 has been imitated and copied so many times since then that it’s easy to forget how unique the picture really was. The most duplicated element of the film must surely be the overall tone, more specifically the hero’s wry sense of humor in the face of life-threatening danger. This flippant manner, basically invented by Harrison Ford in Star Wars and perfected here, provided the template for the eighties action hero. Following in Indiana’s footsteps audiences were soon to be treated to John McClane, Cobra Cobretti, John Rambo, etc. on down to Vin Diesel’s XXX. And mostly because of these lesser imitators, this ironic detachment from the danger the hero faces has come to represent everything that was wrong with the action film in the eighties and nineties. But that’s not the fault of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And if you as a modern viewer can see past all that extratextual weight, you’ll be treated to a rare cinematic treat,
The most noteworthy plot element in this film is just how often (and consistently) Indiana Jones fails. In the opening sequence Indiana swipes a sacred idol from some South American jungle only to have it swiped by the evil Beloq. Once the plot proper begins, Indiana is responsible for the destruction of Marianne’s bar, loses her to the bad guys in Cairo, finds and loses the Ark in the desert and on a boat. Even at the climax of the film, Indiana fails. His ultimate victory comes when he is tied up to pole. It’s hardly the resounding victory you’d expect.
Although all the failures that have lead us to this final moment were fun and everything, this last “failure” does strike the wrong note. Maybe it's the modern perspective from which I'm writing about this film but the fact that the hero's triumph comes from doing absolutely nothing is pretty anticlimactic. In fact, it's really the only sour note in the whole film. Unfortunately it happens to come at the very end of the movie and thus can leave you thinking it wasn't as good as it really was. Maybe that's the reason I'm surprised by how good this film is every time I put it on.
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