Instead, the only hints at any characterisation are him protesting his daughter's cleavage bearing dress to leave no doubt that theirs is a strained relationship.
As an ex firefighter and former Mayor of New York with a failed marriage behind him, they could have crafted the image of a troubled man going through a midlife crisis who finds himself tested beyond his limits. This could all be very entertaining if it wasn't so empty and if only they'd eased back on the throttle a little bit, we could have had a much more successful film. Trapped beneath the waves, there is no debate on the best means of survival but instead a bull headed rush to escape as soon as possible and before you know it, barely any time has elapsed before we have our luckless nobodies dangling from lift shafts, diving through burning oil slicks or scrambling up air vents rapidly filling with water. We've hardly got to know anyone on the ship before the wave strikes and sends their world tumbling upside down in a hail of glass and debris. That isn't the 21st Century Studio Approach to blockbusters at all, the trick is explosions! Lots of explosions! And dangerous stunts that happen in very quick succession with no set up whatsoever. Given the beloved status of the original, besting it was going to be tricky from the start so how to do it? Bestow the characters with as much depth and humanity as possible, arrange it so that you don't want any of them to die just as the original film did? No. A remake of the classic disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure, this tells much the same story with a small group of passengers trying to escape a doomed ocean liner after it capsizes due to a freak wave. With the sun setting in the distance and the immense size of the vessel itself contrasted with the deep blue of the water, this is a visually astounding entrance to a movie that is unfortunately very shallow indeed. A single take that begins beneath the surface of the ocean that swings up and out of it as the underside of the ship slices through the waves, before pivoting round the colossal cruise liner and zeroing in on Josh Lucas running on the deck. The opening shot of Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon is beautiful.
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