On the night of April 14, 1912, one day's sailing time from New York Harbor, the RMS Titanic, the world's largest ocean liner and pride of the White Star Line, was fatally grazed by an iceberg. In less than four hours, a ship which had been touted as "unsinkable" by overzealous maritime writers disappeared into the cold dark waters several hundred miles away from the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic, taking over 1500 passengers and crew with her to the bottom, two miles down.

It was the worst maritime disaster of the early 20th Century, and for over 90 years the tragedy of the Titanic has captured the imagination long after other disasters at sea (the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 by a German U-boat, or the even deadlier Wilhelm Gusthoff incident of 1945, where 5,000 German men, women and children perished when a Soviet submarine sank a German liner in the Baltic Sea) have surpassed the famed liner's death toll. It's certainly a classic story rife with great dramatic touches....the first class men who chose to die like gentlemen...the pluck of the "unsinkable" Molly Brown...the vast gulf between the millionaires and nobles in first class and the "teeming masses" of immigrants in third class and steerage...the mystery of Capt. E.J. Smith's death (did he really go down with his ship on the bridge, or did he perish trying to save a little girl from drowning?)...the band playing on even as Titanic began her fatal plunge...and the incredible loss of faith in man's technological prowess as the world's largest man-made moving object sank because of poor design and, as it turned out, flawed steel.

It's therefore not terribly surprising that the Titanic disaster has been the subject of several books, plays, musicals, and movies. Walter Lord's classic A Night to Remember, first published in the 1950s, has been reissued several times over the past 50 years and remains one of the best non-fiction accounts of the sinking. Documentaries and television specials galore have taken viewers down to the great ship's final resting place over the 20 years since Dr. Bob Ballard discovered Titanic's wreck after years of fruitless searches.

Although several movies and television miniseries have told the story of that terrible night in April 1912, one has surpassed them all to become a cinematic legend, James Cameron's 3 hour and 15 minute-long epic, Titanic.

Writer-director Cameron's 1997 Titanic is, of course, the biggest box office hit of all time, edging out such blockbuster films as E.T., Star Wars, and Jurassic Park for that title. This film, with its tale of star-crossed lovers Rose and Jack intertwined with the real-life tragedy of the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic, won 11 Academy Awards and the loyalty of its millions of fans.

In 1997, though, no one involved in its making (except maybe the determined Cameron himself) believed this movie would float to box office glory. It was so ambitious and so expensive that not one but two studios (Paramount and 20th Century Fox) financed it, splitting the distribution rights and spending over $200,000,000 to recreate the fatal maiden voyage of the 1912 world's largest ocean liner. Yet Cameron, who had previously directed the first two Terminator movies, The Abyss, and True Lies, was proven correct when world-wide audiences embraced this touching and technically brilliant movie.

Yes, this first movie to reap $1 billion in first-run box office gross did capture the hearts of millions of teenage girls who repeated screenings to see Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson woo Kate Winslet's feisty socialite (and soon-to-be-wed) Rose Dewitt Bukater. And while many detractors scoff at this admittedly clichéd poor-boy-meets-rich-girl love story, it is exactly through this pairing that we get a feel for what it was like to travel at sea in those Gilded Era days before the First World War destroyed the old Europe forever.

This film has much going for it. It has, in addition to actual location shots of the real Titanic wreck (the minisub sequence is NOT special effects), a winsome couple, a classic mustache-twirling villain...albeit WITHOUT a mustache (Billy Zane) with the usual henchman (a menacing David Warner), a great supporting cast which includes Danny Nucci, Bernard Fox (who used to guest star in TV series such as Hogan's Heroes and Bewitched), Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton (who has appeared in most of Cameron's movies) and Gloria Stuart (who plays the older Rose Dawson). Titanic also has a great musical score and incredible visuals: the sinking of the great liner is certainly realistic - even if the CGI effects are a bit artificial-looking. This picture certainly was difficult to make, with all those scenes shot on the waters off Mexico and that convincing almost-perfect scale recreation of the White Star Liner. Thankfully, in spite of the media hype and negative publicity, Titanic proved to be a good and entertaining film. I recommend it to anyone who likes love stories or epic disaster films. This movie mixes both genres very well.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older