Techtite's DVD Reviews!

"An acceptable thriller whose largest flaw is that it's about as cryptically 'racist' as the original all-'white' story."

--from the review

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Poseidon (2006)

Click picture to order this DVD (Two Disc Special Edition Reviewed)

A Review by Techtite

As always, a review of The Film and the DVD extras.

Film Review: If you're the sort of person who has a speed dial set for the Political Correctness Police, you'd best avoid Poseidon, albeit for all the wrong reasons. This is one of those films that is visually stunning, admirably acted, and overall, is one of the better remakes I've seen. Yet it made the "cardinal sin" of killing off one or two people who aren't "white," and that has folks in a tizzy. Then again; in a movie about an entire cruise ship slowly sinking, it's not like many people aren't going to die. Isn't that the whole point of a thriller?

In case you missed the original film, here's the core story. People are celebrating New Years Eve on a luxurious cruise ship. A freakish tsunami strikes the ship from the side, which in an even more freakish accident, turns the entire ship completely upside-down. A group of survivors attempt to make their way to the "surface," as it were, but that is very difficult when all staircases, elevator shafts, and whatnot are now completely upside down, and quite frankly, almost completely wrecked.

Leading this rag-tag band of survivors is Governor Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell). Ramsey is joined by his daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), who coincidentally, has just been proposed to by boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel). The "man with the plan" is Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), who comes across as a sort of Han Solo style rogue who doesn't care so much about anyone at first, as much as he needs their help to survive himself; specifically, he needs a team of people to get his crackpot escape plan to work. Then there is Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfus), a man who was just about to jump ship (literally) when all this started. Tagging along is young mother Maggie (Jacinda Barrett) and her young son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), the latter of whom brings out the fatherly instinct in Dylan...or close enough. Rounding out the band of would-be survivors is the sole ethnic character of the group: a young stowaway named Elena Gonzalez (Mía Maestro). Who will survive? Who can say?

It doesn't take long to see what made the political correctness police so upset. You see; the original film was made in a day and age of Hollywood when just about everyone in films was "white." Any remake would have to add a little more "color," to say the very least. But which characters should be changed? That's the problem. Instead of changing just one or two lead stars, the casting department decided to cast a majority of the doomed passengers as Mexican, African-American, and so on. This means that the majority of ethnic characters in this film are the many victims who are doomed to die. To make matters worse; near the start of the film, the small band of survivors are "forced" to let one of only two surviving ethnic characters die, so that the other lead characters may live. I must admit; that's going a bit overboard...pun not intended.

There's really not much else to say about this movie without spoiling any surprises, which I refuse to do here. Let's just say that in the spirit of a similar Kurt Russel movie, Executive Decision, nobody is invulnerable. Remember that film's "big surprise" when one of the biggest action stars dies before even getting onto the hijacked plane? This film is a lot like that, and because of such effective thrills, I'm overlooking the mild political incorrectness, and giving this film a very mild thumbs up.

But does that make it a good film? Not exactly. This is by all accounts the latest Waterworld of our time. That being a film that was so ridiculously overpriced with no sign of how anyone would've thought they could break even. Come on Hollywood; a 160 million...remake?

---Techtite

The DVD Extras!: Keep in mind; what follows is a review of the Two Disc Special Edition. What you get in one of the lesser versions may vary. Yet if you wanted to know about the extras, you want to know about all of them, right? I say all of this, because when I tell you how little there is in the special edition, you may be pretty surprised...

To be candid ---with a whole second disc--- I expected more. Sure you have featurettes galore, though...I don't know. I expected more. There's a documentary on the complexities of modernizing a classic adventure movie, in "Poseidon: A Ship on a Soundstage." Then there's an admittedly intriguing "Shipmate's Diary," which is actually a film school intern's own experiences while on the set. "Poseidon: Upside down" is about set design: "Rogue Waves" is a documentary in its entirety, as originally shown on The History Channel. While this is really nice and all, I guess I just wanted deleted scenes, or an audio commentary, or...?

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