If you're only familiar with director Stephen Sommers via 'The Mummy', 'Van Helsing', or 'G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra', boy are you missing out. If The Mummy is his best movie, then its not hard to say Deep Rising is a strong second. Its a great movie, but its strengths aren't in its originality, or its script, or its plotting, or the acting, or any of that really. Its great because its fun. All of the stuff mentioned above is competant enough, to be passable. Which is where the rest shines through. Its chock full of great one liners, a thoroughly likeable lead, a cool looking creature, lots of slime and tons of awesome gore. And like another personal guilty pleasure, 'Critters', it never takes itself too seriously. In Deep Rising, theres always time for another grin-inducing one liner. Even if the characters are on the run.
The movie starts with our hero Captain Finnegan and his two person crew, who have been hired by a small squad of mercs to sail them out to apparently... the middle of nowhere - no questions asked. We're soon privvy to Finnegan's motto: "If the money is there, we do not care!" Catchy isn't it? We soon find out, that the merc's destination is actually a massive cruise liner. They're in business with someone aboard it, to sabotage the ship, and loot it for all its worth. But before Finnegan and crew actually get the greedy mercs to their destination, the cruise ship is suddenly ravaged by giant mutated deep sea creatures who've surfaced... with an appetite.
The movie takes off rather quickly, and only builds up more tension and suspense from there. Every technical aspect is handled exceedingly well. The music, the score, gets ocassionally tacky, but it does its job when it needs to. Visually, the movie is pretty standard for something like this, until you get to the special effects. Which are awesome. The final big reveal looks a bit dated, obviously, but the creature itself still looks pretty badass! Then comes the gore effects, which both cgi and actual made stuff, both look stellar.
In vein of the Roger Corman flick, 'Forbidden World', all the bloody, slimy, gory stuff is delightfully realized and incredibly well handled. Its rare you can take a movie that on most accounts should be a contrived, cliche, boring, mess, and say wow... this is loads of fun. I keep saying "well handled" and "awesome" over and over, but I do firmly think those two descriptors fit this movie best.
The movie takes off rather quickly, and only builds up more tension and suspense from there. Every technical aspect is handled exceedingly well. The music, the score, gets ocassionally tacky, but it does its job when it needs to. Visually, the movie is pretty standard for something like this, until you get to the special effects. Which are awesome. The final big reveal looks a bit dated, obviously, but the creature itself still looks pretty badass! Then comes the gore effects, which both cgi and actual made stuff, both look stellar.
In vein of the Roger Corman flick, 'Forbidden World', all the bloody, slimy, gory stuff is delightfully realized and incredibly well handled. Its rare you can take a movie that on most accounts should be a contrived, cliche, boring, mess, and say wow... this is loads of fun. I keep saying "well handled" and "awesome" over and over, but I do firmly think those two descriptors fit this movie best.
All the usual pitfalls a movie like this stumbles into, Deep Rising avoids it with some 'well handled' decisions and lots of 'awesome' B-movie attractors. Its full of big guns, classic corny dialog, a damn cool looking creature, and a rather sexy pre-X-Men Famke Janssen. And I just can't get over how likeable Treat Williams is as the hero here. He takes the spotlight pretty well. So overall, whats not to love?
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