ĪDeep Risingā not nearly deep enough

By Dave Flomberg
The Metropolitan

Itās not a ćscream-filled roller coaster ride of suspense.ä Nor is it an ćaction-packed deep sea plunge.ä Itās not even a good sci-fi horror movie.

It is a bad cross between Tremors and Abyss, with little of the humor of the former and none of the intelligence of the latter.

Itās Deep Rising, the new Hollywood Pictures release featuring a really hungry giant sea anemone that finds its fare on the passenger list of the largest luxury liner ever built, the Argonautica.

Treat Williams (The Devilās Own) stars as Finnegan, a speed boat captain hired to take a gang of highly trained thugs to the floating paradise. They were hired as part of an insurance scam being perpetrated by the shipās owner, Canton, played by Anthony Heald (Time To Kill).

Finneganās crew is taken hostage by the thugs once they reach the liner, but they are quickly turned loose as everyone realizes theyāre going to need each other to escape. How heartwarming.

The thugs come across a few survivors of the creaturesā onslaught in the captainās vault, including the captain, played by Derrick OāConnor (Lethal Weapon 2) and Canton.

Enter the love interest, Trillian, played by Famke Janssen (Goldeneye). Sheās a small-time thief who was locked in the refrigerator after she was caught breaking into the vault ÷ which all took place before the sea monster got busy.

One by one, the thugs are picked off by the angry urchin, their deaths humorously narrated by Finneganās grease monkey, Pantucci, played by Kevin OāConnor (Peggy Sue Got Married). His repartee with the rest of the living prey provides for the only real saving grace of the film.

From then on, itās another formula run-for-your-life-from-the-scary-computer-generated-monster movie. The scares are not especially jolting, and the gore is so excessive as to be laughable.

Williamsā portrayal of the Han Solo-influenced barge skipper is less than stimulating and just too clichéd to be believable.

The leader of the thugs,  Hanover, played by Wes Studi (Heat), turns in a performance equal to anything else he has ever done: stoic. His emotionless, pockmarked mug is the stuff bad guys are made of. Janssen is just another sexy leading lady ÷ all flash and no panache.

The underscore in Deep Rising is the worst ever turned out by Jerry Goldsmith, who has earned several Oscar nominations, and won one for best score for The Omen. This filmās score rarely sets up the action on screen and even more rarely matched what was happening at the moment.

Stephen Sommers (Tom and Huck), wrote and directed this movie, and poses no threat to James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. His editing had a ćwhatever-worksä quality to it, and the cinematography was too lackadaisical given the potential of the setting.

Even the monster itelf was laughable. Looking like a cross between that sand pit thing in Return of the Jedi and John Madden, when it finally gets screen time, the end result is more anticlimatic than being a presidential intern.

Better see Deep Rising soon, because itāll sink deeply at the box office.