Sanctum (2011) - There is some potential in here... - 5/10 (20/07/11)

James Cameron's Sanctum always proves that the ex-Canadian and now Hollywood director was involved in the project. The movie focuses on beautiful and breathtaking landscapes, a lot of special and light effects and dramatic survival action. But it also contains the negative elements of his movies. The lack of originality, the complete assimilation to Hollywood standards, the extremely superficial characters and the lack of depth.

Concerning the actors, this movie might easily be his worst. The first thirty minutes of this movie were painful. The high amount of superficial, childish and predictable characters may even be too much for the thirteen year old fast food cinema maniac which explains the low rating on this site. To anybody that knows something about the history of cinema, the dialogues of the first thirty minutes or so are pretty much the worst thing I have ever read or heard since the last Ed Wood movies and they still had a certain charm, bad actors and a lack of budget. In here, all the money seems to be put into special effects but no money at all in the actors. They all should get banned from the film industry.

Why do I still give a couple of points to the movie? That's because after the thirty most horrible minutes in contemporary cinema, the story finally kicks off and delivers an entertaining survival drama. The acting gets slightly better and many dramatic events focus our interest on something else and accelerate the pace of the movie. It surely is no "Cliffhanger" but not that far away from it in the end. Technically taken, this flick is indeed very well executed in the end and kept me in front of the screen until the end. The ending of the movie is surprisingly not rubbish and stereotypical and rather short and sweet which was a positive surprise to me. Now, if they had done the same thing for the beginning, we would have had an excellent action drama with a running time around seventy-five minutes which would have risen the quality of this flick by far. As you can read, there is some potential in here as in many Cameron movies but the cheesy opening just already kills it for me.

I really suggest you watching this flick in the cinemas or in a high quality definition for the great sounds and effects and it won't work as well with the normal standards. This movie is simply focused on the honestly said superficial appearances rather than on something intellectual, profound or original.