There are good movies, there are bad movies, there are good bad movies, and then there are movies that were at one point on the track to being a major motion picture starring Harrison Ford… and then ended up being good bad movies. Deep Rising follows “boat-for-hire” captain John Finnegan (B-movie trooper, Treat Williams) and his two person crew, Joey “Tooch” Pantucci (Kevin J. O’Connor of “The Mummy” fame) and Leila (Una Damon of… I’ve never heard of her). Finnegan and his partners have been hired by a team of mercenaries (made up of some of the creme de la creme of “I’ve seen that guy before in something” actors this side of Smokin’ Aces) that has them jetting out into the South China Sea with a hull full of stinger missiles and nary a detail as to why. The band of merry mercenaries consists of Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans) as their leader and Jason Fleyming (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels), Djimon Hounsou (The Island), Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard), Trevor Goddard (Mortal Kombat), and Clifton Powell (Friday) rounding out the roll call. Finnegan’s illegal little operation’s motto is the ever-so-catchy, “if the cash is there, we do not care” and even Tooch knows that this life philosophy will eventually bite them in the ass and it seems tonight might be the night. The target is a luxury cruise liner called the Argonautica (god, I love B-movies…), the pride and joy of tycoon Simon Canton (Anthony Heald at his slimiest since Silence of the Lambs) who it turns out has hired the mercs to rob and sink the ship so he can collect the insurance money. This plan would have been a rousing success (although I don’t know how 8 mercenaries and 3 smugglers can take out an entire cruise liner’s worth of passengers and crew) if not for the ship becoming infested with a giant member of the Ottoia family of sea creatures. By the time the “heroes” of our story arrive to loot and plunder, every passenger and crew member, with the exception of Canton, the ship’s captain, and a jewel thief named Trillian (X-Men‘s Famke Jansen) have been killed or eaten by the Ottoia’s tentacles that snake and stalk through the bowels of the ship. What follows is basically Aliens but with more one-liners and a jet ski instead of Power Loader.
Deep Rising was at one point a project that was build around getting Harrison into a monster movie only to have him decline and then the studio have the whole project downsized. The only reason this is a relavent piece of trivia is that when you know this going in to watching the movie, you can’t help but admire Treat Williams portrayal of our “hero” Finnegan as basically Han Solo with a much more annoying sidekick and a group of guys that really do seem like they’re from a den of scum and villainy.
So what’s to love about this picture? C’mon. EVERYTHING. Williams portrays a character that can pilot a jet ski and open elevator doors with a shotgun AT THE SAME TIME. You have a team of rogues that are picked off one at a time but still get that one bonding scene early in the movie that makes you go, ” It’s not homoerotic if they have a mexican stand-off, right?” Wes Studi never breaks his stone-faced expression even in the face of vagina-with-teeth-tentacle-monsters attacking. The score is by master movie composer Jerry Goldsmith and works perfectly for the flick. The state-of-the-art weapons used by the mercs make no logical sense and frankly shouldn’t even physically work, but at least look cool throughout. Famke Jansen rolls her eyes more than her character probably demanded (but just enough that the script should have). Plus, this flick is written and directed by the man who knows bad movies, Stephen Sommers of the first two Mummy movies, Van Helsing, and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. In fact, every time I think about just how utterly dreadful G.I. Joe was, I think back to how much Sommers impressed me with this fun little jaunt and wonder if he’ll ever be able to do it again. I enjoyed every second of Deep Rising when I saw it and it is, in my opinion, the basis for my love of the truly B-movies that currently decorate my film library. It’s probably one of the main reasons Why I Like Bad Movies.
