Film Review of Poseidon

718 Words2 Pages

Poseidon, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is an action-packed adventure thriller that is loosely the remake of the 1970s movie The Poseidon Adventure. It has the same basic story idea, but has completely different characters. And although the characters end up being dull and seemingly useless, the movie is very fun and exciting to watch.

It takes place on New Year’s Eve aboard the cruise ship “Poseidon.” As the guests are counting down the seconds until midnight, a very large rogue wave is spotted. It hits the cruise ship and flips the entire thing upside-down, but it remains afloat.

Most of the crew and some passengers die instantly, others are badly injured, and the rest are fine with the exception of minor injuries. One man, Dylan (Josh Lucas) decides he is going to get out of the ship through the bottom, knowing the ship wasn’t meant to stay afloat upside-down. And although reluctant at first, he allows a few others to join him, including Robert (Kurt Russel) – a former mayor and firefighter, Richard (Richard Dreyfuss) – a lonely gay man, Valentin (Freddy Rodriguez) – a ship employee, and Maggie and her son (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy Bennett).

Along the way, they pick up Robert’s daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rassum) and her fiancé Christian (Mike Vogel), Elena (Mia Maestro) – a friend of Valentin, and Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon) – a poker player.

While trying to make it through the ship, they are faced with many obstacles. The ship is filled with water, flash fires, debris, dead bodies, and more. And time is running out, they need to make it to the bottom of the ship before the entire thing sinks.

Poseidon is basically based on the same concept as The Poseidon Adventure, being that the ship gets hit by a monstrous-sized rogue wave and flips over, and people try to get out. However, there are many differences. For example, the characters are completely different – i.e.: instead of a brother and sister, it’s a girl and her fiancé, instead of an old couple, its two people that meet for the first time and have an attraction towards each other. And you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone on the ship the size of Shelly Winters.

The characters also seem quite dull in this remake. There really is no set-up to tell us why they are on the ship or how they got there compared to the original.

More about Film Review of Poseidon

Open Document