Lousy by some standards but an absolute nail-biter, "Sanctum" is a pulpy thrill that reminds you how great a bad movie can be.
Promoted using producer James Cameron's money-printing name, the film reflects his underwater obsessions and, naturally, employs the 3-D tech he built for "Avatar." The movie would play just as well without the gimmick, and stick-in-the-mud moviegoers might suspect its visceral impact would even be magnified with 2-D, letting us imagine the gut-churning depths for ourselves.
But clunky glasses or no, the movie's subterranean world is a richer sensory experience than those offered by most sci-fi flicks. From tight passageways to arena-sized caves, this underworld is connected by channels of water whose lengths aren't known until divers make it to the other side. Though not for claustrophobes, it's an environment to stir childhood fantasies and to drive explorers wanting to see places no human has seen.
Compared with the place itself, many of the movie's humans are as disposable as the air tanks left behind on a mountaineering expedition. If the screenplay is sometimes laughable (and it is), the acting can often be much worse. Ioan Gruffudd, Reed Richards in the dull "Fantastic Four" movies, gives a stinky performance as the billionaire who funds a trip to a cave system in Papua New Guinea. There, two kinds of expeditions are combined - elaborate underwater gear (including a portable bubble room for decompression) must be carted down through caves by people with climbing and diving expertise before the rich guy can enjoy the fruits of their know-how.
The team is led by the gruff adventurer Frank, who as played by Richard Roxburgh supplies just the right quotient of B-movie manliness to sustain the film.
The screenplay may require him to recite the same lines by Coleridge over and over, but Roxburgh's contempt for the effeteness surrounding him happily roots "Sanctum" in a bygone age of movie adventures.
There are obstacles aplenty for Frank and his reluctant son Josh to overcome here, as a massive storm above ground cuts off the expedition's exit and starts to fill the caves with more water.
Scuba systems break mid-dive; extremes of temperature take their toll; fatigue and terror turn teammates into idiots. By the end, even the lights go out, offering the terrifying prospect of trying to navigate the caves by touch alone.
In a scenario so desperate that the injured beg to be killed rather than left to rot in crannies, the filmmakers keep discovering surprising ways to up the ante. For viewers willing to turn off regions of their brains, "Sanctum" offers rewards.
"Sanctum"
Our grade: B+
Genres: Adventure, Thriller, Action
Running Time: 109 min
MPAA rating: R
Release Date: Feb 4, 2011
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