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Deep Rising Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 19 Reviews)

TITANIC + TREMORS + ALIENS = TOO MUCH OF TOO MANY GOOD THINGS?!
"Deep Rising" seems too much like a conglomeration of TITANIC + TREMORS + ALIENS + THE ABYSS, but that seems to = TOO MUCH OF TOO MANY GOOD THINGS for one movie.

Yes, without a doubt, "Deep Rising" has action and eye-candy, action and gore, action and a huge scary monster, and action and a huge scary monster destroying a huge cruise ship. However, "Deep Rising" is somewhat short of plot and character development. In fact, most of the characters vanish before the movie proper really begins. Lacking these two ingredients, "Deep Rising" has characters without plausible motivation and their possible deaths lack much significance because we aren't given the opportunity to care.

It has always been a useful trick to take a story line and, via the editing and rewriting of it, begin the story as near the climax and conclusion as possible. This way, presumably, a lot of boring, repetitious and unnecessary details can be discarded which otherwise might slow things down too much. In the case of "Deep Rising", the consequence is a feeling of disgust rather than an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride. I just don't care about the characters. I don't buy their reasons for doing what they are doing or being how they are and where they are.

ABOUT THE THRILL RIDE:

The fliming is all depicted at night and the camera angles and close-ups that dominate the film give it a very dark and dismal look. Worse yet, the creature really looks like it's CGI and so does the ship. By the time the thrill ride starts, we have a ghost ship which appears like a beautiful portrait of scenery without any people.

ABOUT THE THRILL RIDERS:

Famke Janssen [Dr. Jean Grey from X-Men] who plays a pickpocket named "Trillian" is the one bright spot, but she is not given much to work with beyond her present incarceration on-board for an attempted theft and her fast-study approach to automatic weapons. Her interest in Treat Williams' "Finnegan" seems a bit quick and contrived even for so fast a study.

Treat Williams plays the wise-cracking, cliched, anti-hero, boat jockey, "John Finnegan". Having been nominated for acting awards on five separate productions, we expected much more from him. Instead, his character does the predictable stuff at the expected times in the ways that you will expect if you see this film.

Anthony Heald who plays "Simon Canton", the owner of the Argonautica, is the slick, double-dealing, sleazy, rich villain. He is cowardly, back-stabbing, and without any virtues other than his complete lack of admirable traits. Yuck! He does not even do an adequate job of making us believe or comprehend why all this [the story line] has to happen which is his whole purpose in this film. Heald is well-remembered for his role as the nervous and self-promoting chief psychiatrist "Dr. Frederick Chilton" from "The Silence of the Lambs", so we know he could have done better. In fact, it seems like everyone could have done better, but that has to start with a better script.

ABOUT THE DVD & FEATURES:

Widescreen 2.35:1, French Language Track available, Theatrical Trailer, Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio, Chapter Search. Or in plain English -- NOTHING SPECIAL!

FEW LAST WORDS:

Some horror fans will love this film, but it is not the type of film that Science Fiction fans will find interesting, or enjoyable unlike "The Abyss" or "Aliens" or "Tremors" or "Jaws" or even "The Crawling Eye". It just misses the mark of Horrific Science Fiction and lands somewhere in the depths of the deep blue sea. The sad part is it looks like it really could have been an excellent film if only it had a little more story and characterizations and just tried to be itself instead of imitating so many other excellent and successful films.

"NOW What?!"
If there is a Treat Williams fan club, this movie should be their Bible. Treat Williams pulls off the ultimate, smart-ass action hero in this flick, and gets some decent acting backup from people like Famke Janssen, Wes Studi, Jason Flemyng, and others.
A bunch of high-paid, hot-headed mercs commandeer Treat's boat and head out to the water. Treat and Co. come upon a gigantic luxury ocean liner, which has "mysteriously" been incapacitated out on the seas in the middle of a big storm. There's some intrigue behind it all, but the main thing Mr. Williams and his 'friends' must now worry about is the presence of about a zillion gigantic tentacles which have wormed their way into the deserted (?) ship. These tentacles don't just grab; they eat. A lot. With tentacles busting out of the walls, the water pipes, hell, even the toilet, Treat and Famke and the others then proceed to try and AVOID getting eaten. It's all a lot of fun, with some amusing dialogue and great gore effects, and it builds up to a pretty satisfying and actually very funny ending. If you like action and horror, and you don't take yourself too seriously, then "Deep Rising" will surely fulfill some entertainment needs for you.

"Now What?!"
If there is a Treat Williams fan club, this movie should be their Bible. Treat Williams pulls off the ultimate, smart-ass action hero in this flick, and gets some decent acting backup from people like Famke Janssen, Wes Studi, Jason Flemyng, and others.
A bunch of high-paid, hot-headed mercs commandeer Treat's boat and head out to the water. Treat and Co. come upon a gigantic luxury ocean liner, which has "mysteriously" been incapacitated out on the seas in the middle of a big storm. There's some intrigue behind it all, but the main thing Mr. Williams and his 'friends' must now worry about is the presence of about a zillion gigantic tentacles which have wormed their way into the deserted (?) ship. These tentacles don't just grab; they eat. A lot. With tentacles busting out of the walls, the water pipes, hell, even the toilet, Treat and Famke and the others then proceed to try and AVOID getting eaten. It's all a lot of fun, with some amusing dialogue and great gore effects, and it builds up to a pretty satisfying and actually very funny ending. If you like action and horror, and you don't take yourself too seriously, then "Deep Rising" will surely fulfill some entertainment needs for you.

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