It’s nearly summer and that means it’s time for movie studios to bring out their arsenal of action films and summer comedies. This week “Poseidon” hit theaters alongside the new Lindsay Lohan comedy “Just My Luck” and the star-free “Goal!: The Dream Begins.” I never saw the original version of “Poseidon” circa the 1970’s, so I won’t be making any comparisons in this review.

The newly unleashed version of “Poseidon” begins with an aerial tour of the luxury cruise ship of the same name. The Poseidon has set sail from London and is headed to New York over the New Year holiday. The captain welcomes the throng of New Year’s Eve partiers on board and explains to them that the ship was named after the god of the sea, a fitting way to begin the new year.

As Gloria (Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas) performs in the mega-sized ballroom for happy-go-lucky passengers, a giant wave (apparently known as a rogue wave) is approaching the cruise liner. Unable to guide the ship out of danger fast enough, the crew watches helplessly as the wall of water slams into them. The Poseidon is no match for the rogue wave, and it capsizes and begins to descend beneath the water.

Only a few hundred survivors remain after the initial flip including a gambler (Josh Lucas), the former mayor of New York who also happens to be a former fireman (Kurt Russell) and his daughter (Emmy Rossum), her fiance (Mike Vogel), a nine-year-old boy (Jimmy Bennett), his mom (Jacinda Barrett), an arrogant half-wit who goes by the name Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon), a suicidal man (Richard Dreyfuss), a waiter (Freddy Rodriguez) and the woman he snuck on board (Mia Maestro).

When Dylan the gambler decides that sitting in the overturned ballroom waiting for help is too big of a risk for him, he decides to take matters into his own hands and begins to climb to higher ground. Conor (Bennett) sees Dylan leaving and asks him where he is going. This leads to a handful of survivors asking to come along to try and climb out of the wreckage with Dylan. And so begins a harrowing journey through the bowels of the ship. It’s a race against time through the wreckage of the once luxury cruise liner. Can this group of strangers make it to the ocean’s surface before the ship takes them to the bottom of the sea?

In many ways this film requests its audience to suspend all sense of disbelief. When the ship overturns, many people are killed yet the former mayor, his daughter and her fiance all survive despite being in different locations. Likewise, mom and son both survive and seem to be the only two in their party onboard. In one scene while the group is trying to climb up to the base of the ship and out of the propeller tubes, they are faced with an underwater journey. They must swim from one staircase to another underneath a dividing wall. From a nine-year-old to the aging Richard (Dreyfuss), all manage to hold their breath and swim underwater for what seems like an eternity but which is in reality more than two minutes. At one point Richard even goes back to rescue one member of their group when she hits her head on a piece of metal and passes out, all without taking a breath!

Dylan just happens to be a Navy veteran and therefore is able to perform amazing feats such as diving off a balcony into a pool of burning water without hitting any of the wreckage piled beneath the surface.

Ok, so we get that we have to just believe without questioning. We have to allow ourselves to be swept into the fantasy, right? Except that when the ship overturns we are hit with one scene of graphic realism after the next; passengers falling from great heights, their bodies breaking against bannisters, chandeliers, and ceilings as they fall to their deaths, numerous scenes that show people burning as flash fires ignite throughout the ship, and one scene shows a chain reaction of passengers being electrocuted in the night club as water begins to fill the room.

Although I expected “Poseidon” to be more graphic than say “Titanic” I was unprepared for how brutal it was. In a time when a tsunami has wiped out hundreds of thousands of lives, it is not beyond the realm of possibility for such an event to happen and therefore it is not unrealistic enough for it to be entertaining. At least not in my book.

For those who find themselves susceptible to claustrophobia, a fear of drowning or being burned alive, this movie won’t be easy to see. Even after the initial death sequences, the film is littered with the dead bodies of burn victims and those who have drowned. One particularly harrowing moment comes when the group must crawl through an air vent that is quickly filling up with water in order to reach the next floor.

Beyond all of the unrealistic and too realistic moments, I was disappointed at the lack of interest director Wolfgang Peterson seemed to have in involving the audience in the lives of his characters. We have barely met each of the characters before the ship overturns in the first 20 minutes of the movie, and although we become more invested in their well-being throughout the film, I would have liked to have known more about them pre-disaster.

Peterson, who is not unfamiliar with epic movies (“Troy”) or those involving water (“The Perfect Storm”), does one thing right, he manages to create suspense with his larger than life cruise liner.

Although it’s not the worst action movie ever made, it’s not even close to the best. Unless you like feeling queasy during movies, I would save this one for a home rental. That way you can pause it when it gets a little too real for you, take a moment, maybe even fast forward a bit.

**1/2

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