Review of The Abyss (1989) by Alain R — 01 Jun 2012

"When you're hanging on by your fingernails, you can't go waving your arms around.".

James Cameron is great with action, but he's also a master with sci-fi. He's a fantastic writer, and he usually writes the script for his movies. This is a very interesting movie, but it's probably Cameron's least impressive film.

SUMMARY:

A US Submarine, the USS Montana, sinks near the edge of the Cayman Trough after an accidental encounter with an unidentified submerged object. Russian ships and submarines head for the Montana so they can salvage it. A hurricane is moving in, and the Americans decide to send a SEAL team to a privately owned experimental underwater oil platform, which they will then use as their base of operations. The designer of the platform, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), insists on accompaning the SEAL team, even though her estranged husband, Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris), is currently serving as the platform's foreman. They try to find out why the Montana sunk, but they soon find strange creatures they can't identify. The SEAL leader Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn) is ordered to collect a warhead from a Trident missile aboard the Montana. He and his SEAL team retrieve it, but do so at a really bad time. The hurricane strikes the surface and they are unable to deteether themselves from the surface ship the Benthic Explorer. They sink down to the trench and many are killed as the platform floods. Coffey starts to go under pressure and soon starts acting like a maniac, but the crew soon spot some very strange creatures, and they realise that they are not alone down there.

REVIEW:

This is a very interesting script, but a lot of the stuff about the humans is very clunky. I didn't buy the characters, they weren't interesting and none of them were very likeable. The only interesting character was Coffey, and he was deemed the bad guy due to a mental breakdown. The dialogue was terrible and I thought the ending was a bit unresolved. The twist with the aliens was okay, and the relationship development between Lindsey and Bud was very moving.

The acting was good. Michael Biehn was the winner here as the villain Coffey. Ed Harris was great as Bud and the Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was lovely as Lindsey. The other cast members weren't anything special though.

There were action scenes, but only a few. There weren't that many. The action was still well done, with some awesome submarine battles. If you want a lot of action, I wouldn't suggest this, there really isn't that much of it.

The cinematography was nice. Cameron uses a lot blue lighting in his movies, I don't know why. Is blue his favourite colour? Does he think the colour is effective? I don't know, but it works well in this. Thye're underwater for the whole running time, so the blue lighting is really beautiful in this.

Not James Cameron's best. It's slow and even boring at times. It is intriguing though. These aliens that live underwater, which we hardly ever see in a sci-fi movie, and the aliens look really original. It's a watchable film.