Okay. Well, we went to see this thing. Maybe I'm just too old and have seen too many movies.
Cameron is a very good technical film maker, and although he wasn't director here, he still can get it to happen. His films are always technically well put together. This one was no exception. Reasonably good use of scuba and climbing technology and techniques for Hollywood. The cave could have been more stunning. There are so many knock-out caves to model on. Maybe the sets were more true to what they were supposed to be exploring, but anything that would have helped, considering the lame script.
Sadly, this was just about every other expedition-goes-bad movie ever made. Expert, hard, cold, no-nonsense to the point of abusive, everyone respects but hardly anyone likes leader.
His obligatory one or two assistants of vague but other nationality.
The guy who doesn't want to be there but is.
The ultra-rich sponsor. His naive girlfriend. And the usual crew of bit players.
The formula says the hard-man leader will keep them together at any cost, outrage some of them doing it, will turn out to be a good guy, and will, of course, die selflessly. [yawn]
The leader's other-nationality right hand man. He is, of course, doomed from the start, as he always is. It's only a matter of how he will die and when, but it won't be too long, because he's expendable in the name of getting things exciting. In this case, the bonus is two of these guys, so we get a bonus death. He can't die too soon, though. We need him to tell some stories about how you should really get to know the leader.
The most predictable of all (although it's a close contest) is the rich sponsor. He is, of course, smartass, disregards the leader whenever he wants, and (as he always must in such movies) gets his girlfriend killed, turns coward (we knew he would) to save himself as the expense of others, and dies.
The rest of the crew meet bad ends. Can't have them around as distractions from things like the son asking to be taught Coleridge while climbing the cave. If you didn't see this warm hearted renewal of father-son love coming from the first moment the son made it clear he didn't like his old man, you haven't been seeing enough movies.
I can't fault Cameron too much for the bum script. What kind of imaginative plot is even possible. I mean, okay - you want to make a movie about cave diving. But just because you can doesn't mean you should, at least unless and until you can think up some semblance of an original plot. Makes me wonder if they didn't get way too far into pre-production before they had to proceed with hack script work. Cameron is one of the best at turning tons of money into a major piece of technical work under the most difficult conditions (after first creating those conditions) and apparently now, getting others to do the same. But the script stinks on ice, and the technical work wasn't enough to keep me from wishing I had waited for the DVD.
Bottom line. The tired standard characters running on worn out plot rails detracted from the decent film work which was competent without being stunning. It wasn't interesting. It wasn't fun. At one point, the father and son pass through another sink hole where a Japanese tank fell in back in WWII. Skeltons scattered around. I think you could have made a better film about those soldiers. I think I would have cared about them. As one reviewer said, "I'd rather just go on a dive."
(The saddest thing is maybe that the best part of the experience was the Coming Attractions trailer for Cowboys and Aliens. How can you resist that premise?)
