Starring: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, Todd Graff Directed By: James Cameron Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC Label: 20th Century Fox Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 11, 2003 Running Time: 171 minutes Theatrical Release Date: August 09, 1989
Product Description: A nuclear sub is lost in a deep chasm, and the Navy commandeers the civilian crew of an experimental deep sea oil rig to help in the search and rescue. Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure Rating: UN Release Date: 1-JUN-2004 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video: Meticulously crafted but also ponderous and predictable, James Cameron's 1989 deep-sea close-encounter epic reaffirms one of the oldest first principles of cinema: everything moves a lot more slowly underwater. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, as formerly married petroleum engineers who still have some "issues" to work out, are drafted to assist a gung-ho Navy SEAL (Michael Biehn) with a top-secret recovery operation: a nuclear sub has been ambushed and sunk, under mysterious circumstances, in some of the deepest waters on earth, and the petro-techies have the only submersible craft capable of diving down that far. Every image and every performance is painstakingly sharp and detailed (and the computerized water creatures are lovely) but the movie's lumbering pace is ultimately lethal. It's the audience that ends up feeling waterlogged. For a guy who likes guns as much as Cameron (his next film after all, was the body-count masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgment Day), it's interesting that the moral balance here is weighted heavily in favor of the can-do engineers; the military types are end-justifies-the-means amoralists, just like the weasely government bureaucrats in Aliens. --David Chute
So-so underwater sci-fi and did anyone catch the quick tribute to 10cc? A tribute to 10cc's song "I'm Not in Love" is made at the climax of the film as Mery Elizabeth Mastrantonio quotes to dying Ed Harris the "Big Boys don't cry" line, soon followed by the word 10cc.
Not bad deep water sci-fi. Good performances all around and impressive special effects. The dialogue and word play gets a bit too hammy and the ending is way over the top, which kind of spoils an otherwise good lead up to the climatic finish.
Could be considered an underwater "Twister" sort of movie. Heavy on effects, that takes plenty of liberty with reality. And relies much more on fiction even though it's portrayed mostly as science.
Recommended as a popcorn movie, but don't expect groundbreaking, thought provoking cinema.
Good deep water movie to own I really like the graphics of this movie. It was made well and can even live up the standards of todays high graphic movies. It was full of suspense, action, and drama. I enjoyed especially the special effects that were done. Its one to own and have as one's collection. A+ movie
Soon to be a Classic This is a very good movie, which came out in late 80s. It's by James Cameron, who was director of Terminator, Terminator II and Aliens. It's not as action-packed as those movies, but rather is a an intelligent movie with the equivilent amount of suspense, twists and surprises. The director's cut ending is a great plus, which wasn't available in the original release. If memory serves, this was a box office disappointment, but has become a cult favorite among Sci-Fi fans. If you like smart movies that make you thing and ask questions about our place in the universe, then you'll like this.
Not the best DVD edition I love this movie. It's hard to think of a better masterpiece from the 1980s. It's just too bad I bought this version -- older DVDs like this one have some problems with playback on modern widescreen TVs. Without using the TV's "zoom" feature (which basically makes the image larger to fit the screen, but reduces resolution drastically), you have to watch the movie in a truncated box within the screen. There is no true 16:9 output from the disc itself.
It is indeed presented in "widescreen" format, but the movie plays in a 4:3 setting which shrinks the image to fit within 4:3-sized box in your 16:9 monitor. Not the best way to watch a great movie. I'll have to wait for a Blu-Ray version when I finally upgrade to hi-def.
That aside, the extended version of the film is included along with the standard version. But there are almost no special features at all.
I love these movies Okay, I'm biased because I love under-water sci-fi. But I thought this movie was awesome when it first came out and I recently bought it and watched it again and loved it. Classic.
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