DEEP RISING (1998)
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Stephen Sommers
Written by: Stephen Sommers
Starring: Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Wes Studi, Kevin J. O'Connor, Anthony Heald, Djimon Hounsou
Ingredients: Giant growling octopus creature that attacks a luxury ship, small band of armed travelers which includes elegant lady jewel thief and whiny mechanic
Synopsis: In the story, Finnegan (Treat Williams) is the driver of a rinkydink boat and Joey is his whiny mechanic pal. Finnegan and Joey get captured by well-armed DIEHARD-type commandos who plan to hijack and loot a big cruise ship. The hijackers force Finnegan and Joey to boat them over to the luxury liner, but in the process the little boat gets broken. And to make matters worse, when they reach the cruise ship they find that nearly all the passengers aboard the cruise ship have been devoured by a nasty giant octopus that has mutant tentacles that have jaws on the tips that open up to reveal smaller tentacles with more jaws that open up to reveal even smaller tentacles with even smaller jaws! But not everyone's dead. A beautiful jewel thief (Famke Janssen ) and the captain of the ship (Anthony Heald ) also manage to crawl out of their hiding places in the luxury liner to hook up with Finnegan and the hijackers. Now if they can just beat the octopus and get out of there.
Taking a page from the ALIENS (1986) formula, the band of armed passengers wages a running battle against the big sea beast as it lurks in piping and ducts - - and picks off the hijackers one by one at appropriate moments. Will Finnegan and friends be able to get to the jet skis that conveniently happen to be stored on this cruise boat in order to escape?
Opinion: What happens when you combine SCOOBY DOO characters (minus Scooby) with a TITANIC ship and monsters the size of ALIENS and JURASSIC PARK? Then you get DEEP RISING, an action spoof where a whiny pessimist, a pretty lady, and a square-jawed young leader cross paths with a corrupt sea captain and a giant octopus creature aboard a smashed luxury liner overflowing with water. But right away you can tell it's not a serious movie from the dialogue. When one of the panting characters barely survives an octopus attack, he asks, "Do you just GET asthma, or do you have to be born with it?" And as in SCOOBY DOO, the corrupt captain would have gotten away with his plot, too, if it weren't for those interfering young people. You've seen all the action scenes before in other movies, but what they hey, it's a spoof.
Star Trivia: Famke Janssen is a former James Bond girl and Dutch supermodel who is said to wear size eleven shoes. Wes Studi is a Cherokee Indian who played the bad Mohawk Magua in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Djimon Hounsou is a West African male model who played Cinque in AMISTAD, but in this movie he's one of the mercenary bad guys.
Reviewed by David Sunga January 30, 1998
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