Warner's Poseidon is less of a movie and more of an experiment in cinema as if Wolfgang Petersen tried to see if a film could be carried only by the authentic emotions of actors in peril. Unencumbered by character development or dramatic questions about who to follow, who lives or who dies, or which way to go, Poseidon is filmed somewhat incredibly in sequence, with the actors doing their own stunts on gigantic sets. Petersen and DP John Seale shoot with multiple hand-held cameras striving to capture actual anxiety in the performers documentary style.
The result is... OK. Part of the problem is the mix of live action and visual effects. Sure the actors experienced on-set peril (wearing safety harnesses), but the film is so chock-full of effects work, from the 99% computer-generated opening shot to the numerous digital set extensions, that we become inured to the spectacle assuming everything was probably shot bluescreen. Nor does the marketing help. In a good DVD extra, Petersen and the actors talk about the harrowing experience of being on set. But their message has already been dulled by the segment's title, "Ship on a stage," which conjures images of actors drinking Evian in trailers between takes.
The performances also suffer from perhaps too big a dose of reality. Amazingly, that really is Josh Lucas swimming under a pool of fire. But Lucas' determined expression is the kind of mask we put on when trying to accomplish a task under stress. By putting his actors in difficult situations, Petersen has stripped away actor-y performances to reveal yet another level of performance never getting to primal emotion.
Finally, the film can't get around the central emotional requirements of mainstream cinema. We're set up to believe that this is going to be a gritty keep moving-or-die drama. Indeed, the grainy cinematography used after the wave hits pleads for us to take the movie seriously. Yet, the characters have to pause and reflect when one of their group dies—even though we know that the water is rising quickly around them. These kind of concessions disrupt any attempt by the filmmakers to express authentic terror.
Poseidon is an intriguing experiment, a sort of big budget reality show in which not-quite bankable actors do their own stunts on gigantic soundstages. This Circus of the Stars-meets-Survivor is a taut, brisk watch forsaking even the expected denouement. But it its desire to strip away the conventions of the genre and distill film to the thinnest of narrative threads, Poseidon also does away with the reason we watch these films in the first place. It's reasonable entertainment with a hollow aftertaste.
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