Remake grabs attention early and never lets go

The real stars of the film are the production values.
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
KANSAS CITY STAR
It may sound strange to describe a movie in which just about everybody dies horribly as "fun," but that's what "Poseidon" is.
There was no real need for a remake of the 1972 disaster flick about a capsized ocean liner and a handful of passengers fighting to survive. But director Wolfgang Petersen, screenwriter Mark Protosevich, a game cast and especially the production and special effects designers have produced an unstoppable leviathan of a movie, one that grabs us early and never lets go.
Everybody knows the drill on this one.
A tidal wave flips a big ship. Most of the surviving passengers gather in the ballroom to await rescue, but a handful decide to climb up to the keel and try to find a way out through a propeller shaft.
As they work their way through the shambles of the ship's interior, they face one obstacle after another: flames, explosions, rising water, impossibly long underwater swims, falling debris.
And with each obstacle, another member of the party bites the big one.
Who will survive?
Not an actor's movie
This isn't an actor's movie; the players need look only terrified, shocked, resolute and wet. And they've got those down pat.
There's the pretty stowaway (Mia Maestro) who has forged a sex-for-passage deal with a crewman (Freddie Rodriguez).
Kurt Russell plays a fireman who because of his heroics was elected mayor of New York City. Now long out of office, he's on a cruise with his daughter (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend (Mike Vogel), who is planning on this very day to propose.
Richard Dreyfuss portrays a gay architect whose lover has dumped him and is contemplating drowning himself -- at least until the tidal wave makes the gesture redundant.
Heading up the effort is a professional gambler and confirmed loner (Josh Lucas), who against his will finds himself leading this tiny band of survivors and bonding with a single mother (Jacinda Barrett) and her young son (Jimmy Bennett).
Andre Brauger is the ship's captain, and Kevin Dillon plays the movie's only truly ridiculous character, a sleazebag in a ruffled yellow tuxedo shirt who, faced with a life-and-death situation, wastes time by hurling poisonous insults at his fellows. His demise can't come fast enough.
Here for spectacle
A halfhearted attempt has been made to give these characters back stories but, really, who cares? We're here for the spectacle.
And there's plenty of that. The real stars of the film are the production values.
The massive Poseidon is terrifically impressive when upright; once she's flipped and her insides are scrambled, the ship becomes a sort of ogre's castle filled with traps for the unwary.
The tidal wave sequence is, well, awesome. The dangerous stunt work of the original film has here been replaced with a seamless blend of live action and computer-generated effects that'll have you guessing what's real and what exists only in bytes.
Unlike the original "Poseidon Adventure," which has become something of a camp classic, this remake hasn't a sense of humor. It offers nothing so deliriously over-the-top as Shelley Winters' underwater swim in the '72 version.
Still, Petersen has given us a popcorn movie that lives up to that description.
Except that when it's all over you may find that you were so wrapped up in the adventure that you hardly touched your popcorn.