The Poseidon Adventure (2005 film)

The Poseidon Adventure
Directed by	John Putch
Produced by	Mary Church
Written by	Paul Gallico (novel) Bryce Zabel (screenplay)
Starring	Adam Baldwin Rutger Hauer Steve Guttenberg Bryan Brown C. Thomas Howell Peter Weller
Music by	Joe Kraemer
Cinematography	Ross Berryman
Editing by	Jennifer Jean Cacavas
Distributed by	Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Running time	TV version: 154 min. extended version: 173 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$14,000,000 (estimated)

The Poseidon Adventure is a 2005 action and adventure film based on a novel by Paul Gallico. It is a remake of the 1972 film of the same name.

Not to be confused with Poseidon, a 2006 film with a similar plot.

Plot

The plot centres on the SS Poseidon, a 135,000-ton state-of-the-art luxury cruise ship on a cruise from Cape Town, South Africa to Sydney, Australia carrying 3,700 passengers and crew. On New Year's Eve at Midnight, it is overturned by a terrorist bomb following an attack. Many passengers die when the ship turns upside-down except a small group who try to make it out of the ship via the hole created by the bomb. Eventually the survivors reach the hole, but find it too blocked by debris to use. Coming up with another idea, they head to the other side of the ship where a second unexploded bomb is located (this one was foiled) and detonate it and successfully open a hole in the hull. The survivors jump into the water and swim to nearby Navy boats and are picked up just as the ship begins to sink. The survivors watch as Poseidon sinks, while a British agent who had been helping out laments the fact that there are so few survivors.

Production

The film was made for television by Larry Levenson Productions, directed by John Putch, written by Bryce Zabel, starring Adam Baldwin, Rutger Hauer and Steve Guttenberg. It was first aired on NBC as a single three-hour event on November 20, 2005. It also aired in 2005 on the Seven Network in Australia (with the name The New Poseidon Adventure), and in 2006 on the USA Network in the United States. In this adaptation, the plot differs from the original book and first feature film in that the ship capsized because of a terrorist act. Though many of the characters remained the same, several were added. Some were dropped altogether. The character of Mike Rogo was changed to a sea marshal who works for the Department of Homeland Security. The story was altered because it was felt that the original's disaster was unrealistic since a tsunami out at open sea is only a few inches high and does not have the strength and size to seriously affect a large vessel.

The final scenes of the film include details from the novel of the Poseidon's sinking that were not part of the original 1972 film adaptation. The final shot was from the air as the ship's propellers slipped beneath the surface, which, by design or coincidence, matches several photographs taken by a news plane of the final moments of the SS Andrea Doria in 1956.

Primary cast

• Rutger Hauer as Bishop August Schmidt
• Adam Baldwin as Sea Marshal Mike Rogo
• Steve Guttenberg as Richard Clarke
• Bryan Brown as Jeffrey Eric Anderson
• C. Thomas Howell as Doctor Matthew Ballard
• Peter Weller as Captain Paul Gallico
• Alex Kingston as Suzanne Harrison
• Alexa Hamilton as Rachel Clarke
• Clive Mantle as James Martin
• Sylvia Syms as Belle Rosen
• Tinarie Van Wyk as Aimee Anderson
• Amber Sainsbury as Shelby Clarke
• Rory Copus as Dylan Clarke
• Geoffrey Pierson as Admiral Jennings
• Peter Dobson as Agent Percy
• Nathalie Boltt as Shoshanna
• Andrew Brent as Ronald Acre
• Peter Butler as Badawi

See also

• RMS Titanic
• RMS Lusitania
• SS Andrea Doria
• Poseidon (fictional ship)
• The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
• Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
• Poseidon (2006)

External links

• The Poseidon Adventure (2005) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Poseidon Adventure (2005) at AllRovi
• The Poseidon Adventure at Rotten Tomatoes