Well, I’d hoped to start these film reviews off on a slightly intellectual note, but it wasn’t to be … so here are my thoughts on Poseidon instead. It’s big, it’s dumb, but is it any good?

Poseidon / Dir : Wolfgang Peterson

Does anyone not know the concept of Poseidon? It’s a nominal remake of disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure, in so much as there’s an enormous pleasure-liner that gets flipped over by the mother of all tidal waves. A handful of survivors try and make their way up and out without being burnt, crushed, drowned, electrified or chopped into small pieces. On the plus side, they’re led by superhero ex-fire-fighter ex-mayor millionaire Kurt Russell and gruff professional gambler with a heart of gold Josh Lucas, and they all have the lung capacity of Olympic swimmers. On the minus, the boat is steadily sinking, exploding and generally falling to pieces.

For the first ten minutes or so, Peterson wheels on his small cast and allows them their sound-bite introductions. So, for example, Emmy Rossum’s character wanders onto screen and says something along the lines of “hi, my name is Jennifer. That guy’s my dad, and that other guy’s my boyfriend. I’m sexy but independent. These are my breasts.” This may sound like exaggeration, but it isn’t. Even the last bit. And when everyone has said their piece he hurls millions of dollars of CGI water at them. From that point onward, everything moves at such an insane pace that plot and characterisation will be the least of your worries. Or at least, that seems to be the plan - you might as well sit back and not worry about such things as who and why, because god knows the writer and director haven’t.

Peterson has managed to construct this summer’s most uncompromising blockbuster. Poseidon makes no concessions to any of the traditional rules of narrative storytelling: There’s no shadow of a plot; except for one very justified bit of claustrophobia, all of the characters have no concept of fear, and are superhumanly strong, (even an antique Richard Dreyfuss); the film goes so far beyond set-piece saturation point that you need attention deficit disorder just to keep up.

And somehow it works - or at least it did for me. With the experience of both Das Boot and A Perfect Storm behind him, Peterson handles the enclosed spaces and underwater action exceptionally well, and his cast gamely keep up and do their best with the material on offer. A few scenes, including a deeply unnerving sequence in a flooding ventilation shaft, are truly nail-biting. And it’s always good to see Kurt “call me Snake” Russell in work. With a touch more depth, a hint more realism and some less plastic looking CGI this could have been much more than it is, but for sheer dumb fun you could do a lot worse than Poseidon.