Raise the Titanic (1980)

Classic

Love this movie, it's a classic. At the time it came out it didn't get the greatest ratings because of the other movies it was up against. If your a Clive Cussler fan this is a perfect movie for you. Not to mention it gives you a little background on the movie Sahara. May 10, 2008

Upstaged By Reality, Still A Good Movie

When you watch this film today, you have to ignore the real world finding of the RMS Titanic that occurred only five years after this film came out. Remember that most people had thought that the ship had gone down intact.

The plot premise was that the United States had developed a anti-ballistic missle system, but a very rare element (byzanium) was needed to power it. Unfortunately, apparently the entire known world supply of byzanium was locked in a storage vault in the wreck of the Titanic. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

So, a plan is formulated to locate the ship and raise it to the surface. The Soviets catch wind of this plan and work to thwart it, through some very surprising and innovative means, I must say. The Soviets are not the simplistic thugs some films might have portrayed, but are cunning and subtle.

The acting quality is good and the underwater scenery was very well put-together. If you over-analyze this film, it will ruin it for you. Just go with it, ignore what happened in the real world and appreciate the film for the effort. January 20, 2008

forget all the other complaints, this is just really boring

Sure people talk about the problems with this movie and sure some people love it, but all that aside, the movie is quite boring. Not one thrill to be had,not one!!!!!
March 20, 2007

Not bad, just rather dull

A one-time Stanley Kramer project before he jumped ship after a couple of weeks' filming, Raise the Titanic is one of those films that isn't really that bad, it just isn't much good. It handles the exposition and setup briskly and efficiently and the raising of the wreck genuinely spectacularly, but everything inbetween is just tedious and undramatic. A huge problem is the decision to drop the parallel narrative from the book: where the film only concentrates on the modern-day story, which means lots of looking at sonar screens while mini-subs float around in the darkest depths of the ocean for almost as long as it took the ship to sink, the book livened things up with the ship's maiden voyage and sinking as well. The end result is by the rules storytelling that keeps everything under two hours, but which keeps everything pretty flat as well. Still, it has its moments - Alec Guinness' cameo, Richard Jordan wandering through the ghostly skeleton of the Titanic's ballroom, the sequence of the raised Titanic sailing into New York past the Twin Towers inadvertently linking the first great civilian tragedy of the 20th century with the first great civilian tragedy of the 21st - and has a very nice score by John Barry.

Sadly, while the film looks good in its original Scope ratio, Carlton's UK DVD is cropped to 1.85:1 - for the full 2.35:1 widescreen version you need to track down either the Australian or Swedish PAL DVDs. November 18, 2006

Raising the Titanic - This IS Fiction

Seriously, this is one of my favorite movies! Granted it's got a hackneyed script and having a nuclear submarine head off the Russians (we were still in the "Cold War" remember?) was a bit far fetched, but what makes it a favorite is:

Richard Jordan - Always a treat to watch act, no matter if he is playing Harley on the Equalizer or General Armistead in Gettysburg.

Sir Alec Guiness and Jason Robards for the same reasons.

The best part - the first 15 minutes when you have the excellent John Williams score interspersed with photos of the actual Titanic before it's maiden voyage. Not even James Horner, with Cameron's Titanic comes close. It brings back the feeling of the era and the pathos of man thinking that humans could design a "ship that God, himself, couldn't sink".

This is definitely worth a watch even if you find you don't like it. It's a couple of hours well spent.

October 2, 2006

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