The Abyss

I like short reviews so I will try to keep this short!

Let me begin to tell you this movie is original! Not to many movies are being made that have an underwater setting.

The movie is about a drilling team who operate a high tech underwater drilling station deep under the sea. As soon as they become cut off from the surface in a storm near an underwater crevice things are getting a weird.

Strange in a way that the movie slowly shows that something scary and silent is there with them on the ocean floor. It builds suspension gradually until it ends within a climatic ending of the movie which I really liked (but some people have other opinions about that!)

Acting is great and the story very original with just enough action!

**** out of five!

There was a time, way back in the '80s - before James Cameron suffered head trauma and devoted his life to Avatar - when the man made blockbusters that had a humanity at their core; something instantly relatable despite the sci-fi setting. The Abyss is one of those, with Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio reconciling their failed marriage amidst mortal peril. Indeed, they're trapped miles beneath the ocean's surface, negotiating nuclear warheads, attacking subs and a hair-triggered Michael Biehn.

Cameron creates a realistic environment that still feels otherworldly, populates it with real people and ratchets the tension to unnerving heights. The effects are fantastic, ast are the performances and - as scary as this place is - I would easily come back to revisit.

When we think about aliens in the movies, I guess everybody immediately thinks about the series of "Alien" - movies, but there are some other fine examples and "The Abyss" may well be the best alternative I can come up with. Even though this was made by James Cameron, the same director who gave us "Aliens", both movies are very hard to compare.

When an American nuclear submarine is attacked during the cold war and crashes, the navy is convinced that it was the work of the Russians. They want to salvage the wreckage as soon as possible, because a storm is coming, but they aren't able to send a diving crew of their own that quickly. That's why they contact a group of workers of a nearby underwater oil rig, who reluctantly accept the job. They are joined by some navy SEALS who will help them to locate and investigate the cause of the crash. But they do not only find the crashed sub, they also find out that there is more down there in the deep than what they had ever expected to see.

What I liked so much about this movie was that this time the aliens didn't feel threatening at all. It was something completely different from what we were used to see and it worked perfectly. This was a beautiful, well-crafted movie with some very fine acting and with some excellent special effects. Even though this movie was created in 1989, the computer animations were still marvelous and breathtaking. In fact, this entire movie is breathtaking. It is very touching and powerful at the same time and I'm sure that many people will have a lot of difficulties not to show any emotions while watching it. I give this movie an 8/10. It sure doesn't deserve any less.

This movie is extremely well made. Make sure you get the original director's cut, or Special Edition as they are calling it on the DVD. It includes the real ending, along with more than 20 minutes of additional footage. The morons from the studio in Hollywood decided that the public wouldn't want to see a nearly 3-hour underwater adventure, and forced James Cameron to cut it down and change the ending. The ending the studios insisted on is your typical boring old done-a-million-times happy ending, and does not work. It betrays the message of the film, and makes it nothing more than a good underwater shoot-em-up. This movie is much more than that. See the REAL ending to understand why it is so important to this film. As opposed to the canned studio ending, the REAL one makes you think. Well, what did you expect? Hollywood executives make movies for the common herd, they dumb them down to make sure every patron goes away feeling happy. God forbid that anyone actually may have to think a little. At the time, despite a few solid hits (such as the original Terminator), James Cameron wasn't enough of a power in La-La land to force the studios to release the movie as he wanted it to be. After Titanic, they will do whatever he says, so we can now expect some great Cameron films to look forward to, rather than having to wait for the REAL movie to come out years later on a Special Edition DVD.

The Abyss is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi films. It mixes hard science with abject fantasy to make moral and philosophical points about the human condition and our place in the universe without the usual clichés. And it does so with good dialog, strong characterization, and intensely emotional acting. Harris and Mastrantonio are absolutely electric together and dominate the screen, but the entire cast deserves plenty of credit. The production itself is mesmerizing despite its vast scale and tastefully used special effects. The film is long, but worth every second of the experience, and the slightly lengthier, more detailed Special Edition version is even better than the original.

Ostensibly, this is a film about first contact with non-terrestrial intelligence. But the story allegorically deals with an amazing array of themes common to great dramas - violence, love, capitalism, war, courage and cowardice. The hardest, most obedient soldier in the film, played spectacularly by Michael Biehn, is a coward, and a man who is hopelessly in love with his estranged wife (Harris) turns that love into an act of suicidal heroism which might unintentionally save the world. And yet nothing is exactly as it seems to be, and there are really no spoilers in this review. There are so many subtle and sensitively developed themes in this film that it is hard to imagine a more epically human drama in the sci-fi genre. Even so, this is a film which entertains at every level, and will satisfy the action fan as much as the wannabe film critic. ;-)

Most of the film takes place on an experimental submarine drilling platform owned by a petroleum company. A nuclear sub has been lost in "the abyss" - a subduction trench near the Caiman Islands - after encountering an impossibly fast object. Soon, the US military commandeers the platform and its command ship - The Benthic Explorer - to attempt a rescue mission. As everything begins to go wrong, and the encounters with strange phenomena continue, the Navy SEAL in charge of the rescue attempt begins to crack. Meanwhile, on the surface, accusations concerning the sub are escalating between the USSR and USA, and nuclear war seems immanent. This describes just a small segment of the deliciously complex plot that unfolds in The Abyss. You'll have to see it to enjoy the rest.