Perhaps the most boring movie of ALL time!
Some egg-heads in the higher echelons of the US department of defense have discovered a mystical and obviously bunkum mineral “Byzanium” which will aid their attempt to generate the “holy grail” of nuclear proliferation; a nuclear wall of lasers that will stop any incoming ICBM, much like the star wars or SDI project. Only, its really expensive to mine, in short supply and the only known mine is in Soviet hands.
Except, well Dirk Pitt knows of another source; the mythical byzanium can be found on the RMS Titanic which sunk to the bottom of the Ocean.
Whereas this could have been a good “race-against-time” and was obviously molded on the whole Ice Station From Zebra with generous Bond-like undertones from the soundtrack, this movie is so SLOW its hard not to get up from your sofa, do a few exercises, go around the park with your dog and come back to find out their still in the water doing something “dangerous”.
To say this movie plods through its non-existent and paper-thin plot with the pace of snail is perhaps a compliment to this movie which overly spent on budget and grandeur for little return.
Everyone is miscast, there is no suspense — and in the end we find out that they spent 100 Billion Dollars on rising a ship when the mystical byzanium isn’t even on the ship — they later find its in someones grave but don’t bother to dig it up because of the moral implications… but I’m not sure if they were the moral implications of robbing someone’s grave or because the byzanium could be used for, wait for it, a byzanium bomb.
Another thing I noticed from this leave the grave scene is that is very ironic consider, the ship, Titanic, has sunk with its treasure; so the US navy decides to rob it but wont rob a poor mans grave and seeing now Titanic is being purged by people aiming to make a quick buck on tragedy well I thought the whole scene was ironic.
I almost choked on my pseudo-popcorn at that point. Its almost like they said “Hey we spent 100 billion dollars on this tedious project; 3 people died — but what the hell, let’s leave the super-radioactive gunk in this grave, it won’t hurt anyone!” The movie is tired, boring, stale, flat, and utterly a waste of time, money, effort, valor or reason.
IMDB: Raise the Titanic [IMDB]
Rating: 1 out of 10.