Movie:
If you like adventure books then Clive Cussler writes some fine ones, and I would certainly recommend them to people that like the genre. Raise the Titanic is a film that is based on Cussler’s fourth book of the same title whereby a team led by Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan) launch an operation to obtain some Byzanium which they suspect is in the hold of the Titanic. This Byzanium is needed to power a defence system called “The Sicilian Project” and so has a high priority from the Government. Of course the Russians get to hear of it and launch their own operation in order to obtain the ship and its precious cargo.
This is a pretty good plot line and should certainly have been able to hold it’s own in the cinema considering the actors involved and the estimated $30,000.000 to $36,000.000 budget it cost to make. And to give you a sense of scale at this budget, the 1984 movie Terminator cost an estimated $6,400.000, and the 1986 movie Aliens an estimated $18,500.000. So the budget was huge, so huge in fact that Lew Grade one of the producers declared that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic. But the film turned out to be a massive flop at the cinema, why?
Ultimately I think that it flopped because it was dull. Although I suppose it is unfair to kill it off in that one short word, so I will say that it is mostly dull, which lets face it isn’t much better. The scenes that redeem it (a little) are towards the end when preparing the Titanic to be raised, I’ll admit that these scenes held some tension and drama, I’ll also admit that the raising and subsequent re floating of the Titanic is pretty impressive, even today in this world of CGI effects (mentioning the raising is not a spoiler as you can see it on the front cover of the box).
But it is in the remainder of the movie that we are let down, especially for fans of Dirk Cussler and his Dirk Pitt stories. One thing that leap out at me which I must admit I may have missed as I was bored, was how did the Americans know that they needed to use Byzanium for a fuel source if no Byzanium could be found to use anywhere else on Earth, why could the power not be Nuclear? I guess if they made it Nuclear then it made the whole raising the Titanic question pointless which by the time you reach the credits is (sadly) exactly what it is…pointless.
A big thing could have been made of the Russian threat, the idea that the two superpowers at the time could go head to head was a massive vein that they could have taped into quite easily, and yet the Russians never really came across as threatening in anyway whatsoever, so that was another opportunity lost which could have racked the suspense up a few notches. On top of this there was disappointment for the Cussler fans, maybe not back in 1980 when he was still quite a fledgling author, but certainly today on the back of this DVD release. Al Giordino is missing entirely and Dirk Pitt is actually quite an un-likable, argumentative type of guy, which is a million miles from the novel character.
So with an action/adventure story with very little action or adventure and a story that only stick to the full Cussler story sparingly it could only bomb. I cannot help thinking that story of the Titanic and everything surrounding has always conjured up romanticised notions of the large proud luxury liner sinking on her maiden voyage and the script writers figured that any story that involved the ship would be a sure fire hit, well how wrong they were.
Bonus Material:
Not much in the way of extras on this DVD release. We have a Theatrical Trailer and an Image Gallery. Then there are more images which are put into a gallery of rare images. And there is a press material gallery too. The one extra that I did enjoy watching was a time lapse set of pictures detailing how the model that was used in the film has fared over the years. The model itself is in Malta and when built weighed in at 10 tons with a 55ft length and 12ft height it was the largest model of the Titanic ever built. The shots are from between 1987 and 2006 and we can see that the model has not fared that well over time. Same as the film itself really.
Overall:
I wanted to like the film and if they had stuck a little more closely to the original Cussler story they would have had a brilliant action adventure film but they didn’t stick to the film and they didn’t get a brilliant action film. Instead they have a bit of an insipid drama with no real action or involving storyline. The one redeeming scene at the end just isn’t enough to carry the film. All this coupled with a poor transfer make for a film that if I am honest is best avoided.
Click here to purchase Raise the Titanic from Amazon.