Deep Water

Rating:
Summary: Not so deep junk
Review: About the Movie:
From the stacks of "you get what you pay for" comes this rather awful b-grade direct to video movie.

Deep Water sloshes through water parted 30 years ago by one of the classic adventure films of the late 20th century, Poseidon Adventure. Like Poseidon, it involves a cruiseliner that is hit by a tidal wave and capsizes. Like Poseidon, everyone dies except maybe 5 people. Like Poseidon, the only way to get out is to travel up to the lower hull to escape.

Deep water tries to be unique by adding guns and bad guys. There's no Gene Hackman yelling at God in this movie. Instead we have terrorists trying to kidnap an heir's daughter and a US Marine trying to stop them amidst rushing water, excruciatingly bad dialog, lousy sets and mediocre visual effects. We even have sharks swimming around in a kitchen in a place where there is no obvious way they could have gotten there. Oooo! How original.

This is clearly a rip off of a far better film. The film even recognizes it halfway through when one of the bad guys on the ship gets upset about the situation and announces, "We're living in the Poseidon Adventure . . . , and I for one intend to be in Ernest Borgnine's group when they pop the hull and haul his fat butt out."

At least they admitted it.

There really isn't very much redeeming about this film. Not even the performance by the late James Coburn could do anything to help it. Then again, since his entire part in the movie involved him sitting helplessly on a Navy Aircraft Carrier and fuming at politicians, I suppose it's not much of a surprise.

The only good thing about this movie is the opening theme. It's sort of catchy.

About the DVD:
This budget DVD release comes in a plastic hard case in fullscreen (pan+scan) with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The video quality is decent.

Like many budget DVDs, it lists its interactive menus and inclusion of scene selections, subtitles and theatrical trailers as Bonus Features. Strange how they call them Bonus Features, when 99.9% of DVD releases have them.

Bottom line? Get the Poseidon Adventure instead. It's a far more entertaining and a far better movie than this halfhearted ripoff of it. 1 lonely star.

Rating:
Summary: Deep Debt
Review: My guess is they lost money on this one. Although James Coburn certainly turns in a good performance as the Captain of a Navy Aircraft Carrier, we don't see that much of him. Costas Mandylor tries hard as a macho Navy Seal but just can't carry the movie by himself. The rest of the perfomances are mediocre. It comes close to being a worthy film but doesn't quite make it. I think a good acting bad man like John Lithgow or Gary Oldman would have made it work, but the group of kidnappers aboard the cruise ship just don't have what it takes.