A movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen with music composed by Klaus Badelt can be nothing else but brilliant. And 'Poseideon' definitely proves me right. At first I thought it might be a cheaper version of 'Titanic', but besides from the fact that both movies are about a ship-catastrophe, they couldn't have less in common. Usually those kinds of movies are far too long and get boring after some time. This one is only 1 hour 38 minutes, but they are filled with tension. The main characters are introduced shortly, then the waves comes and the tragedy begins... within the first 10 to 15 minutes! I liked Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell together. Their characters weren't especially complex, but they did manage to make them believable. The fact that Kurt Russell's character dies at the end makes the whole story more real and less Hollywood - it's not fair who lives and dies in real life either (I hope the people who were involved with 'War of the Worlds' read this). The characters may be a little stereotyped... Everybody who watches it can somehow identify with one of them. There's the homosexual, the young heroic guy, the mother and her little boy, the overprotective father with his grown-up daughter, the brat, etc. Those could have been a little more complex, I admit it. The story, though, is very interesting, full of tension, love, shocking scenes, desperation, heroism and tragedy. The viewer feels connected to the characters, one knows about their lives and some personal things, so seeing them die (partly) makes one aware of the great catastrophe.