Customer Reviews

Deep Rising

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This movie is so great that they should make 2nd movie call "Monster Island:DEEP RISING 2". With different characters.

some good moments in a film directed by Stephen Sommers(directed the dreadful Mummy movies). this one is his best one so far with Treat Williams and Wes Studi and Studi's shipmates and Williams crew go and highjack a luxury cruiseliner but find something different on board thats eatting alive all the crew. so they race against time and try to stop it and survive. Kevin J. O'Connor sparks some laughs alongside Williams. dont get to caught up in the moment, the beast at the end is stupid but the ship exploding is great and Anthony Heald is way funky in this pic.

Boy, I do love the combination of ships and blood-fests. I thoroughly enjoyed both Virus and Ghost Ship, and now another favorite arises from the depths.

Despite no big name stars, get ready for some truly great performances from the cast; Treat Williams as Captain Finnegan, Kevin O'Conner (The Mummy) as Pantucci, Una Damon as Leila, and Jason Flemyng as Mulligan, just to name a few.

A group of would be robbers armed with torpedoes set out to terrorize and rob a luxury cruise ship, hiring Captain Finnigan and his ship and crew, who hire out to anyone with the cash, no questions asked. The cruise ship is sabotaged by an insider on board, but before the pack of robbers can make it onboard, something else takes control of the ship: the big squid thing.

Already on board is Trillian, played by Famke Janssen, a fairly incompetent female thief who manages to get herself locked in the vault before being able to steal a necklace she was after.

With Finnegan's ship disabled from running into a stray lifeboat, they all board the cruise liner, meet up with Trillian, and one by one fall victim Mr. Squid. Very action packed, rapidly moving, gorily fascinating splatter fest that is a five star must see. Especially when Mr. Squid vomits out the half digested guy who is still alive, one of my all time favorite horror movie scenes.

There are crunching skulls, folding metal, bursting pipes, rapid gunfire, and some pretty funny dialogue that manages to not sound out of place like so many flat one liners in horror films. All of the messy, gory, bloody lower levels of the ship, bending and peeling metal, various and sundry body parts, combine to announce the arrival of the squid-like monster with immense strength and an appetite to match. All in all, a wonderful journey with a surprise, funny ending. Enjoy!

I absolutely love Action God Stephen Sommers' wild little beast of a movie "Deep Rising" with all my heart, because 1) it entertains me monstrously and never fails to get me out of a black depressed funk and 2) it reminds me of all those gorily juicy, full-blooded, red meat horror films they used to make back in the eighties---except this bloody little romp was cranked out in 1998!

That said, get your sea legs, load the double-barrel shotgun, and let's venture into the hold of this derelict. Is "Deep Rising" worth a look? Well let me ask you a few questions:

Do you like the idea of lots of bloodshed, wanton carnage, and wholesale slaughter?

Do you like the prospect of watching the gorgeous (and water-logged) Famke Janssen clamber around a derelict ocean-liner for nearly two hours?

Do you like movies about voracious, wicked sea-beasties that eat first and ask questions later?

Do you like seeing movies in which Evil Cowardly Villains get their just desserts in exactly the fashion they deserve, screaming and mewling in pain and horror?

Have you ever wondered what it's like to buzz around a luxury ocean liner on a ski-doo?

If you answered "yes" to even one of the questions above, then "Deep Rising" is for you. Sommers is the Leonardo da Vinci of the Action Film, and he keeps the pace taut, the dialogue crisp, the blood flowing like cheap Merlot, and the bodycount rising into the double digits! Best of all, you get the sadly underrated Treat Williams as the gruff and mercenary boat-captain-with-a-heart-of-gold (he'd be wearing a fedora and wielding a whip if Sommers thought he could get away with it)
unwittingly transporting a gaggle of terrorists to a cruise-liner for pillage and plunder.

Plot? You want plot? Fine. The terrorists are after loot hidden away on a luxury cruise liner on its maiden voyage, a liner owned by a greedy shipping tycoon played by Anthony Heald. Fun stuff!

A downside to this Pleasure Ship of Death? The CGI graphics, which nearly undo the movie's creepy, ghoulish, uber-gory vibe: the creature itself looks atrocious and has far too much freedom of movement to be truly scary. Sommers should have recognized that with a film of this type, less is more, and stuck with prosthetics.

But I'm quibbling. "Deep Rising" is a perfect little horror flick and just what the doctor ordered if you're in the mood for hungry undersea beasties, gore galore, amoral and greedy villains, and a healthy selection of panicked victims-to-be, to say nothing of the best axe-killing scene this side of "The Shining." Make sure you get a cabin with a picture window and sea-view---Tickets, please.

Jeff Shannon can't say it any better about writer/director Stephen Sommers than he does in his review, but you've got to admit that the director of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns sure does know how to entertain. Deep Rising doesn't aspire to be anything special, and it certainly isn't, but thanks to the solid (if underachieving) cast and gruesome special effects, Deep Rising manages to be better than most of the slew of derivative Aliens knock offs that it is associated to. Treat Williams plays the typical hero role as he and his group of mercenaries arrive on an ocean liner to find most of the crew slaughtered by a huge leviathan like creature with a taste for blood and guts. The special effects are nicely done for the most part, but the film's biggest flaw is that it is entirely too predictable. The rest of the cast includes the gorgeous Famke Janssen (X-Men), Kevin J. O'Conner (The Mummy), Anthony Heald (Silence of the Lambs), Cliff Curtis (Training Day), Djimon Hounsou (Amistad), and the late Trevor Goddard (Pirates of the Caribbean). All in all, if your looking for a half decent way to kill an hour or two, this isn't such a bad choice.

I found "Deep Rising" to be a fun sea monster movie that is sort of a cross between "Beyond The Poseidon Adventure" (the sequel to "The Poseidon Adventure") and "Aliens" only a little more goofy than either of those two films.

The three stars, Treat Williams as the captain of a fast moving boat hired by mercenaries on a secret mission, Famke Janssen as the beautiful pickpocket on-board a cruise ship, Kevin J. O'Connor as the panicky friend of Treat Williams and mechanic of Williams' boat, are all great, but the rest of the cast whom mostly make-up the team of stereotypically macho and obnoxious mercenaries are unlikable.

As for the story and action, I thought it was great until the last five or ten minutes which seems to be the point when the inevitable physics-defying action scenarios begin occurring, but the scenes before that are logical.

Also, I found the sea-monster to be excellent. It reminded me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu monster that shows-up as drawings on the covers of his books and I'm sure that's what must have inspired its creation.

This movie has a ton of action. While it's not exactly intellectually stimulating it is a fun check your brain and grab some popcorn sci-fi action flick. The fictional Chinese assault rifle they carry is very cool and the movie doesn't have slow boring spots, it's fast paced till the end. Check it out for an alternative to shark movies.

A crew of Highjackers led by Treat Williams go into a ship where the passengers suddenly have disappeared but only find one surviving passenger ( Famke Jannsen), they all must survive and escape the ship from a deadly prehistoric monster that is attacking the ship.

It's got a farfetched plot but this movie is very entertaining and gory at times. The monster itself is cool looking, the action keeps going making this a enjoyable feast of blood and action.

Also recommended: Titanic, Ghost Ship, Die Hard, Leviethan, Deep Star Six, Deep Blue Sea, Alien Resurrection, Aliens, From Dusk Till Dawn, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Die Hard 2, Con Air, The Rock, The Toxic Avenger, Slugs, The Beginning of the End, Jaws, Lake Placid, Alien, Predator, and Total Recall.

I like Treat Williams. I like Famke Janssen. I like movies about ships lost at sea, and the toothy creatures that lurk in its depths and look on people as savory entrees. Oh, and I definitely like the Alien series.

All that explains why I sort of enjoyed Deep Rising, a rollercoaster of a movie that tosses all pretense of originality out the window from the get-go and focuses on doing the same old thing in a fun and flashy way.

I used to have this on DVD and I only watched it once. Perhaps this is because the film is quite boring and even the presence of the beautiful Famke Janssen cannot balance the trash out.

Every set looks the same as the last and it's just so dull. It should have been gorier and milked it's hardly original concept for all it's worth. The dialogue simply stinks too. Jerry Goldsmith's music is below par also which is very strange for him as he usually produces the best stuff.

Sommers went on to direct The Mummy and The Mummy Returns and from these 3 films it's easy to guess how his typical standard will be. Skip it.

The DVD is in Dolby 5.1 and non-anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen.