Houdini's Magic Movie Ticket

This was on AMC today, and I got sucked in. It's so good! I think Gene Hackman did a fantastic job portraying a guy using his intelligence, common sense, and reason to solve puzzle after puzzle and guide as many people as he can to safety.

It was very interesting to watch him try to convince the main group to go with him. I thought of him as Lex Luthor in "Superman," when he was the greatest criminal genius on earth. He seemed as intelligent in "Poseidon." And yet not a lot of people would listen to him. He wasn't a professional ship man, so most people took the word of the loud guy that did have a job on the ship. Hackman would yell his smart points, and the guy would yell back that he was wrong. Then Hackman moved up toward the bottom of the inverted ship, and all of a sudden the masses and the ship guy had to deal with a flood and chaos. They didn't make it.

That's always an intense dynamic, when someone smart wants to lead the way to safety and salvation, and the rest of the people don't want to believe. It happened in "The Day After Tomorrow," when Jake Gyllenhaal told the people in his building not to try to survive outside and travel. He'd just gotten advice from the most knowledgeable person on earth regarding the disaster everyone was experiencing, and few people would listen. Too bad.

I don't think the seventies version of "The Poseidon Adventure" is bad at all. In fact, I think it's fantastic! It seems almost timeless. I enjoyed it.

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