Unsinkable

This hasn't really anything much to do with the Titanic, it's more to do with the politically motivated inquiry carried out by American presidential hopeful Senator Smith (Cotter Smith). Immediately the news of the sinking breaks, he decides that he is going to appoint himself as the chairmen of a senatorial committee to investigate the tragedy. When the "RMS Carpathia" arrives in New York with survivors, he proceeds to arbitrarily detain them all - reducing many to living on the streets eating from soup kitchens and huddling around bin-fires in the cold, while he plays judge and jury with the surviving crew and the White Star Line's manager director Bruce Ismay (Sam Turich). This way he can ensure he keeps his name in the papers and look like some sort of avenging angel. It's actually the papers who begin to prove the more honest of the assessors here, though, as young reporter "Alaine Ricard" (Fiona Dourif) quite perilously manages to get to the truth not just about what might have happened at sea that night, but of also identifying the senator's motives and the connection between US corporate interests and the likely commencement of the Great War in Europe. Karen Allen features for about two minutes as his supportive wife, thereafter this is just a really rather lacklustre television drama that I found increasingly difficult to take seriously. The interrogations by his committee are riddled with leading questions, hindsight and contradictions - to the point where anyone with the slightest of legal backgrounds would have told him to take an hike. It plays to just about every class stereotype you can imagine and even if it did have some legitimate points to make about what might have been preventable on the day and criticisms to make of the behaviour of some of those concerned, these were lost amongst the weakly written dialogue and the arrogance of the investigator. I am afraid this disappoints from start to the rather lacklustre conclusion. I'm surprised that this got a cinema release in the UK, it's really very poor.

I was disappointed by the movie and still trying to figure out the primary goal. There the references to World War I and JP Morgan but never fully explained . If it was about a zealous senator then it also left that unexplored. The typical tact is to blame Ismay but history shown he was not at fault. The topic is to complex to cover in the time of the film.

I have read about 75% of the senate transcripts so I was able to judge accuracy. They cherry picked some quotes that were not validated by others or not quoted exactly. For example, Fleet, the lookout testified that they usually had binoculars but he did not say if he had them it would have prevented it. Others testified they are not useful at night. Also all testified there was little panic on the ship as shown in movie. All testified that most women that presented themselves got on a boat. Many stayed below (maybe due to the cold) and even many (including crew) did not expect it to sink. What I got out of it was that it took a long time to get all the boats out and by the time it was obvious it would sink many hard already left.

Smith was very aggressive in the hearing looking for someone to blame (Ismay, telegraph operators, British Board of Trade, White Star exec, boat loading, etc.) and was criticized for his lack of knowledge of shipping.

I wish they dove deeper into the "why" this ship was sunk, was it sunk deliberately? Who was aboard that could be a threat to those in power? Talk more about J.p Morgan, follow the money trail. This movie showed me the strength Senator William Alden Smith used and his intuitive abilities because I believe he smelled more than an iceberg. Funny, how we jumped right into a world war right after this historic maritime tragedy, to forget about it. The young journalist Alaine Ricard did quite a heroic journaling/spy job, so did Fiona and I bet they would have reached a nugget closer to the truth if they kept going. The investigations were even rudely remarked on by President Taft which is interesting. If not so rushed the truth would have come forth and whoever was behind it didn't wish for that to happen. A great new perspective that makes you think with this one.