Poseidon - Movie Review

Watched Poseidon on Monday with a friend from high school. I normally watch movies in the evenings on weekends so it was rather surprising how few people there are on a Monday night (could be counted on 2 hands) even though this cinema is in Sydney city.

It's essentially Titanic except they're trapped in an upside-down ship and it isn't boring (it probably won't win any film awards as a result :)).

Quite a thriller as a bunch of the characters break away from the main group to save themselves, as the water rises inside the ship and fiery debris is abound. They drop one by one. I say "a bunch of characters" because character development is fairly poor, there are too many main characters (think "Copland" but not as bad), some of the actors look the same and could have gotten away with playing another character for a bit without anyone noticing.

For black humour, the kid resembles the one from "The Sixth Sense" so just after the ship has tipped over, and with encouragement from a former fireman, he jumps down from where he's hanging, I could just imagine him making the observation "I see dead people".

Nevertheless, the acting of all the characters is exceptional and the life-death decisions they make are rather gripping. The camera work is excellent in building up and maintaining the tension. The pan around the ship at the start is stunning (and could probably only have been done via computer graphics).

Now for plot problems:
1. The elderly man mentions something to his business partners (?) about someone regrettably leaving and that they know the consequences of this. He seems to try to get in contact with this mystery man (but later throws his mobile phone into the ocean). It is implied that this person leaving is going to result in some disaster but this seems to have no bearing on the plot (unless it was disaster). Anyone know what's going on?

2. The captain orders the ship to do a starboard flank. However, the "rogue wave" is shown to be approaching from the right of the ship. So the captain actually turned the ship into the wave!

3. The area with the main dance floor of the ship is claimed to be airtight and the air bubble will keep the ship afloat. But air must be pulled from the outside otherwise, even in normal situations, air would run out quickly and everyone would die of carbon dioxide poisoning (exhaled breath). Therefore, it can't be airtight.

Summing up, an exceptional thriller for people who appreciate simple entertainment. On my Prime - Spiderman 1/2 - Batman Begins scale, where Prime = hopelessly boring, Spiderman = ok-good and Batman Begins = exceptional, it scores somewhere between Spiderman and Batman.