A Disaster Movie With Just Enough Spark

Read Time:6 Minute, 11 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Poseidon [Limited Edition]
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Genre: Action, Adventure, Disaster
Year Released: 2006, Arrow Video 4K 2025
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director(s): Wolfgang Petersen
Writer(s): Mark Protosevich, Paul Gallico
Cast: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mía Maestro, Andre Braugher, Mike Vogel, Freddy Rodríguez, Kevin Dillon, Fergie
Where to Watch: available August 12, 2025. Pre-order your copy here: www.arrowvideo.com, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: The 2006 reimagining of both the film THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (and the novel by the same name) wastes no time getting to the chaos. Just ten minutes into this high-budget disaster film, a rogue wave upends the luxurious cruise liner, flipping it upside down and throwing its passengers into instant panic. From there, the film plunges into a nonstop scramble for survival—lean on setup, heavy on spectacle. I’m a sucker for disaster films, especially those from the golden era of the 1970s, and this remake leans into the chaos that made them work.

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, POSEIDON is a textbook example of mid-2000s Hollywood disaster cinema: slick, digitally enhanced, and designed for maximum mayhem. It’s also back on physical media with a new 4K Ultra HD limited edition from Arrow Video, complete with Dolby Vision, interviews, featurettes, and enough bonus material to please any collector. If you’re here for fireballs, flooded hallways, and last-minute heroics, this disc delivers.

The film trades depth for archetypes. Kurt Russell plays the heroic ex-mayor turned protective father, Josh Lucas is the reluctant leader with a mysterious past, and Emmy Rossum provides the emotional anchor as the daughter caught between survival and young love. Richard Dreyfuss adds a touch of gravitas as a heartbroken man contemplating suicide until disaster gives him a reason to keep moving. The rest of the cast—Mía Maestro, Freddy Rodríguez, Jacinda Barrett, Andre Braugher, and yes, even Fergie—fill in the gaps with varying degrees of presence.

POSEIDON is, by design, less character-driven than its 1972 predecessor, and certainly less emotionally rich. Instead, it prioritizes action over arcs, throwing its ensemble through flaming corridors, collapsing stairwells, and narrow underwater passages at a relentless pace. The script offers just enough background to differentiate the survivors but avoids lingering too long on anyone’s life. That choice works both for and against the film—it keeps the energy high but limits emotional investment.

Where it excels is in visual execution. The effects, even nearly two decades later, hold up remarkably well (for the most part). Industrial Light and Magic crafted the ship’s digital environments and destruction sequences with an eye for precision, and the practical sets—especially during inversion scenes—remain some of the most immersive of their kind. Watching it now in 4K enhances those details, revealing not only the scope but the texture of the chaos. Arrow’s restoration makes every flooded corridor shimmer with menace.

That said, there’s a hollowness beneath the surface. For all the noise, the tension rarely evolves. Characters run, climb, or swim toward safety, but few decisions feel like they carry real consequences. The script offers flashes of insight—a quietly moving scene with Dreyfuss, or Russell’s sacrifice—but these moments are quickly submerged in the next high-stakes obstacle. The pacing is brutal in a good way, but it also leaves little room to breathe.

Despite its flaws, POSEIDON remains enjoyable. It taps into the primal appeal of disaster cinema: the 'what would you do' stakes, the ticking clock, and the formula of strangers forced to cooperate. Petersen keeps the film’s pacing tight and its stakes visible. It’s easy to understand why the film wasn’t a massive critical hit—it’s loud, simplistic, and built more for theme park thrills than character drama—but it’s also easy to see why fans of the genre continue to champion it.

Arrow’s limited edition release adds even more value. Interviews with the production team shed light on how the massive sets were built, how the VFX team approached the challenge of blending water and fire, and how the film’s practical effects teams kept things grounded. There’s a welcome acknowledgment of the film’s limitations and a celebration of what it got right. For disaster film aficionados, this is one of the more underappreciated studio spectacles of its time, and now it’s finally given the deluxe treatment it didn’t get in 2006.

POSEIDON might not rise above the waves of its own genre clichés, but it doesn’t need to. It plunges headfirst into its premise, drenched in urgency and ambition. It may lack the human soul of its predecessor, but it makes up for that with visceral immediacy and technical flair. And thanks to the new release, it’s never looked better going down with the ship.

Bonus Materials:
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Ocean View, a brand-new interview with director of photography John Seale
Big Sets for Big-Time Directors, a brand new interview with production designer William Sandell
Surfing the VFX Wave, a brand new interview with visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis
Bringing Out the Dead, a brand new interview with make-up effects on-set supervisor Michael Deak
Set a Course for Adventure, a brand new retrospective on the film by Heath Holland
Poseidon: A Ship on a Soundstage, a featurette looking at the film’s production, featuring interviews with cast and crew
Poseidon: Upside Down, a featurette exploring the film’s challenging set design
A Shipmate’s Diary, a featurette following production assistant Malona Voigt on the set of Poseidon
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey
Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page

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[photo courtesy of ARROW VIDEO, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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