The Abyss [1989 film]
by James Cameron (Director)
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When a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks, the Navy commandeers the crew of a civilian deep sea oil rig to help in the rescue operation. This perilous mission becomes a wondrous odyssey into the unknown as forces from the ocean's deepest region begin to make contact with the divers.Tags
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Thi9s is my first taste of Orson Scott Card, but it shall not be my last. He's taken the screen play and made ita bettere story. Cheers for him.
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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 show more 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 show less
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 show more 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 show less
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James Francis Cameron was born in Kapuasking, Ontario, Canada on August 16, 1954. He studied physics and English at California State University before dropping out to pursue screenwriting. In 1990, he formed his own production company called Lightstorm Entertainment and in 1993, he founded a computer special effects company called Digital Domain. show more In 1984, he wrote and directed The Terminator. His other movies include Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, and Avatar. In 1997, he wrote and directed Titanic, which earned eleven Academy Awards. He took home Oscars for best editing, best directing, and best picture. He created the television shows Dark Angel and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. He is the author of several books including Terminator 2: Judgment Day and James Cameron's Titanic. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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