The Abyss

I like short reviews so I will try to keep this short!

Let me begin to tell you this movie is original! Not to many movies are being made that have an underwater setting.

The movie is about a drilling team who operate a high tech underwater drilling station deep under the sea. As soon as they become cut off from the surface in a storm near an underwater crevice things are getting a weird.

Strange in a way that the movie slowly shows that something scary and silent is there with them on the ocean floor. It builds suspension gradually until it ends within a climatic ending of the movie which I really liked (but some people have other opinions about that!)

Acting is great and the story very original with just enough action!

**** out of five!

The story of The Abyss starts with a mysterious crash of a US nuclear submarine that is armed with the appropriate nuclear weaponry for its time. With reports of it down, we want to get it before the Russians do.

When it rains it pours, literally in this case. A fast moving storm forces the Navy to use the crew and equipment from a nearby underwater deep sea drilling platform and the oil roughnecks are promised some big government checks for their help.

Crew chief Ed Harris gives his reluctant consent, made even more reluctant by the fact that his estranged wife Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has designed some new equipment for use in the really deep waters of The Abyss of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Navy people and the oil people are a bad fit to start with, but when the deep depths effect Navy SEAL Michael Biehn by bringing out the worst aspects of the military authoritarian personality things get real interesting down in the deep.

The spectacle does dwarf the story which is the only real criticism I can make of The Abyss. What the submarine made accidental contact with is some incredible alien life form which I can't go into further because that's the whole point of the film. Of course Biehn still believes it's all a Russian plot of some kind and therein lies the conflict exacerbated by the extreme paranoia he develops.

Unlike Cameron's Titanic, the spectacle at the end just overwhelms the human players in this film. But it was those special effects that go The Abyss its Academy Award recognition. The Abyss was also nominated for Sound and Art&Set Direction and Cinematography. It could have been a winner in any of those categories. In fact the biggest mistake you can make which is the one I did make, to see The Abyss on the small screen and formatted. This film is what IMAX was developed for.

Though the story does get lost somewhat in the special effects the point is still made about man being ready and open to all kinds of possibilities of life that can exist anywhere. See The Abyss, but wait for a revival showing at a theater.

This movie is extremely well made. Make sure you get the original director's cut, or Special Edition as they are calling it on the DVD. It includes the real ending, along with more than 20 minutes of additional footage. The morons from the studio in Hollywood decided that the public wouldn't want to see a nearly 3-hour underwater adventure, and forced James Cameron to cut it down and change the ending. The ending the studios insisted on is your typical boring old done-a-million-times happy ending, and does not work. It betrays the message of the film, and makes it nothing more than a good underwater shoot-em-up. This movie is much more than that. See the REAL ending to understand why it is so important to this film. As opposed to the canned studio ending, the REAL one makes you think. Well, what did you expect? Hollywood executives make movies for the common herd, they dumb them down to make sure every patron goes away feeling happy. God forbid that anyone actually may have to think a little. At the time, despite a few solid hits (such as the original Terminator), James Cameron wasn't enough of a power in La-La land to force the studios to release the movie as he wanted it to be. After Titanic, they will do whatever he says, so we can now expect some great Cameron films to look forward to, rather than having to wait for the REAL movie to come out years later on a Special Edition DVD.

The Abyss is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi films. It mixes hard science with abject fantasy to make moral and philosophical points about the human condition and our place in the universe without the usual clichés. And it does so with good dialog, strong characterization, and intensely emotional acting. Harris and Mastrantonio are absolutely electric together and dominate the screen, but the entire cast deserves plenty of credit. The production itself is mesmerizing despite its vast scale and tastefully used special effects. The film is long, but worth every second of the experience, and the slightly lengthier, more detailed Special Edition version is even better than the original.

Ostensibly, this is a film about first contact with non-terrestrial intelligence. But the story allegorically deals with an amazing array of themes common to great dramas - violence, love, capitalism, war, courage and cowardice. The hardest, most obedient soldier in the film, played spectacularly by Michael Biehn, is a coward, and a man who is hopelessly in love with his estranged wife (Harris) turns that love into an act of suicidal heroism which might unintentionally save the world. And yet nothing is exactly as it seems to be, and there are really no spoilers in this review. There are so many subtle and sensitively developed themes in this film that it is hard to imagine a more epically human drama in the sci-fi genre. Even so, this is a film which entertains at every level, and will satisfy the action fan as much as the wannabe film critic. ;-)

Most of the film takes place on an experimental submarine drilling platform owned by a petroleum company. A nuclear sub has been lost in "the abyss" - a subduction trench near the Caiman Islands - after encountering an impossibly fast object. Soon, the US military commandeers the platform and its command ship - The Benthic Explorer - to attempt a rescue mission. As everything begins to go wrong, and the encounters with strange phenomena continue, the Navy SEAL in charge of the rescue attempt begins to crack. Meanwhile, on the surface, accusations concerning the sub are escalating between the USSR and USA, and nuclear war seems immanent. This describes just a small segment of the deliciously complex plot that unfolds in The Abyss. You'll have to see it to enjoy the rest.

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs.

Revisited the 171 mins version recently n completed the movie in one sitting.

Inspite of the runtime, the film is engrossing n visually breathtaking.

The dark trench and Ed Harris' character going down way below is more scary than most horror movies.

James Cameron is a genius n there's no doubt bah it but i am surprised that most fellas havent given credit to H. G. Wells, as he was the first to introduce the notion of a sea alien in his 1897 short story "In the Abyss".

Ed Harris n Michael Biehn both gave memorable performances.

Biehn's character is downright creepy.

The CPR scene is a bit far fetched n melodramatic.