Leviathan (1989)

reviewed by
Michael Soukup

                                  LEVIATHAN
                       A film review by Michael Soukup
                        Copyright 1989 Michael Soukup

LEVIATHAN (no stars out of four) Director: George P. Cosmatos Cast: Peter Weller, Amanda Pays, Richard Crenna, Hector Elizondo, Daniel Stern, Lisa Eilbacher, Ernie Hudson, Meg Foster

Okay, no one expects a movie like LEVIATHAN to be great. Or even necessarily very good. But even in this era of lowered expectations, LEVIATHAN proves that one's expectations can never be too low. This is not an underwater ripoff of ALIEN; it is a virtual remake. But Mr. Cosmatos, you're no Ridley Scott.

All of the elements of Scott's film are assembled. As the following diagram illustrates, Shack Number 7's crew matches very nicely with the crew of the Nostromo.

          ALIEN                        LEVIATHAN

Tom Skerritt -------------> Peter Weller Sigourney Weaver -------------> Amanda Pays Ian Holm -------------> Richard Crenna Yaphet Kotto -------------> Ernie Hudson Veronica Cartwright -------------> Lisa Eilbacher Harry Dean Stanton -------------> Hector Elizondo

This is not an exaggeration. It gets even worse. While out mining one day, two of the crew members (attired in underwater gear that closely resembles space suits) discover a ship (!). Needless to say, through a series of events, a monster invades the mining shack and weeds down the size of the crew. At one point, the crew is even sitting around complaining about the size of their shares (homage or plagiarism--you be the judge!). And, of course, there is "The Company" which may or may not be lying to them. Hmmm. Where have I seen all of this before?

Obviously LEVIATHAN isn't original. Okay. That was kind of obvious from the outset. But what is unforgivable is LEVIATHAN'S utter ineptitude. Every opportunity for suspense or tension is frittered away. Everything is flat and uninspired. Cosmatos simply doesn't know how to build a scene. He seems more interested in getting Ms. Pays into her underwear (not once but twice) than moving the story along. By the end, it has become so completely ridiculous that there is nothing left to do but laugh. Except I wasn't laughing. This is the kind of moviemaking that is really depressing--aiming low and missing.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews