Lately Arrow has been on a roll – with their releases of older blockbusters on 4K UHD. Their latest release of 2006’s Poseidon was a film I originally missed on its original theatrical release and used this as an opportunity to finally check this third reimagining of Paul Gallico’s 1969 novel The Poseidon Adventure out. This contemporary re-envisioning was penned by Mark Protosevich, and was his followup to another recent Arrow release, the severely underrated serial killer flick The Cell. The film was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who had a rather impressive and diverse filmography up to that point, with such hits as Das Boot, The NeverEnding Story and Enemy Mine to his name leading up to this title. All that said, it’s still a film about a luxury ocean liner that is capsized by a rogue wave, and the survival of its crew and passengers.
The rather taut summer tentpole stars Kurt Russell, who here is going through an awkward dad phase in his career as former New York mayor Robert Ramsey. He teams up with professional gambler Dylan Jones (Josh Lucas) to lead a group of survivors out of the bottom, or now the new top of the capsized ship through a tube near the propeller. While Russell has a backstory that firmly establishes a set of survival skills as a former firefighter, I spent the majority of the film waiting to hear Dylan was ex-special forces. Like the original this all goes down on New years eve, with Russell attempting to save his daughter and her boyfriend, while Dylan is tasked with a beautiful single mother and her son who is blessed with some truly insane plot armor.
There’s also a weird cameo with Fergie, but that is neither her nor there.
The presentation here looks great. Given the majority of the film takes place at night, either in the dark areas of the ship, or on water with a surprising clarity to the image – that still manages to hold on to the detail consistently throughout the film. I was a bit worried given all those factors were a recipe for disaster and digital mashed potatoes, but this disc looks and sounds great. The extras are fun, they don’t dig too deep, but that’s to be expected give the fact this film didn’t make much of a splash on its release, but it does offer up some welcome behind the scenes info.
Check out a full rundown of the extras below:
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Ocean View, a brand-new interview with director of photography John Seale
- Big Sets for Big-Time Directors, a brand new interview with production designer William Sandell
- Surfing the VFX Wave, a brand new interview with visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis
- Bringing Out the Dead, a brand new interview with make-up effects on-set supervisor Michael Deak
- Set a Course for Adventure, a brand new retrospective on the film by Heath Holland
- Poseidon: A Ship on a Soundstage, a featurette looking at the film’s production featuring interviews with cast and crew
- Poseidon: Upside Down, a featurette exploring the film’s challenging set design
- A Shipmate’s Diary, a featurette following production assistant Malona Voigt on the set of Poseidon
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page
Poseidon delivers on everything you’d expect, but with a bit more death and dismemberment than I was expecting. While the action is pretty intense, it’s easy to see who will most probably make it out alive early on. Looking back now the only thing this film had going against it was it had the misfortune of releasing the same week as The Da Vinci Code, which was a bonafide phenomenon at the time and blew this film out of the water. So if you’re digging this new trend by arrow of resurfacing these older blockbusters Poseidon is pure popcorn fodder and worth a viewing.
