Mostly, it’s Hackman trying to rally the others to stick to the plan and leading them through flame-filled galleys and ducts that may or may not be too tight for the plus-sized Winters to get through. Save for the occasional cutaway to the capsized ship rumbling underwater from an explosion, the effects in The Poseidon Adventure are mostly limited to Dutch tilts, shots of bolted furniture hanging upside down, and intermittent bursts of water as the flooding breaches the lower (upper) levels. Among the 10 that join him are a cop (Borgnine) and his wife (Stella Stevens), retirees (Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson) en route to meet their infant grandson in Israel, the singer (Carol Lynley) in the house band, an injured waiter (Roddy McDowall), and a vitamin-popping haberdasher (Red Buttons). While the ship’s representative advises everyone to stay put and wait for help, Frank believes that the only chance for survival is to climb the six levels “up” to the bottom, but few are convinced. Gathered in the promenade room for a New Year’s Eve party, the surviving passengers are the top of a ship that has now submerged, which means they’re at the bottom.Īs the Rev Frank Scott, a minister who argues that people should help themselves rather than rely on God to do it, Hackman spends the film turning doubters into disciples, which is never easy. When an undersea earthquake near Crete triggers a tsunami, the captain (Leslie Nielsen) tries to steer away from the 100ft wave, but the ship lists so badly from the impact that it flips around entirely. And much like a cop on his last day before retirement, the ship is about to get popped. They’re making sure they earn their paychecks, too, just like Hackman.īased on Paul Gallico’s novel – which would be adapted two more times subsequently, most notably in a 2006 flop from the Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – the film takes place on the SS Poseidon, an old luxury liner that’s taking a final journey from New York City to Athens. But Allen and director Ronald Neame turn a simple fight for survival into an action showcase that nonetheless goes to greater lengths than necessary to develop its characters and make their survival (and sacrifices) meaningful to the audience. He strives to make the movie deserve his performance.įifty years later, The Poseidon Adventure remains an irresistible relic of the pre-blockbuster era, before Steven Spielberg came along and proved that productions of this scale didn’t have to feel so ungainly. He was a pro’s pro: in a cast full of hams and gams, Hackman creates a character whose will to live – and to save other’s lives in the process – is a matter of religious devotion, a Job-like burden against a spiteful or indifferent God. For actors that prolific – he would appear in over 100 movies in his career – there’s usually a temptation to “phone it in” on the junkier projects, but as a troubled preacher who leads 10 passengers up to the bottom of the ship, Hackman commits himself so fully to the role that you’d never imagine he’d ever shrug it off. It’s a lumbering ensemble piece, with Ernest Borgnine screaming at the top of his lungs, Shelley Winters swan-diving into floodwaters and an annoying little boy who happens to know that the engine room on a capsized ocean liner has a steel hull that’s only one-inch thick.Īnd yet Hackman is legitimately extraordinary. In the grand arc of Hackman’s career, The Poseidon Adventure is not a work of art like The French Connection or The Conversation, but a tacky Irwin Allen production, to be followed later by another enormous disaster movie, The Towering Inferno.
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