With a terrific historic reality and a massive disaster to portray, this tele-movie production makes a reasonable attempt to whittle the story down to 90 minutes. The actual sinking was 18 minutes and fraught with a speeding ship plunging itself further beneath the waves as it sank. Lots of costumed extras leaping and screaming and some mean men grabbing at ropes and lifeboats whilst little children escape. Pretty good possibilities...BUT again we are forced to try and see what is going on because of the terrible hand held gawking camera-work. Throwing the camera about is supposed to add to the chaos as the ship sinks but as usual all it does is blur the picture as it darts about, and annoys the viewer. The facts of the sinking are well told in other posts here and the aftermath was Americas excuse to enter WW1, so political intrigue, factual bastardry and epic ocean-liner destruction make for a potent offering. The art direction is good, costumes and sets quite convincing and some CGI impressive...BUT with a swivel head cameraman and contrived visual mess it soon becomes tedious enough to see the viewer turn away. John Hanna is a fine everyman and the emotion with his escape and the water scenes as the ship (apparently) sinks is good. Adding irritation is the ONE long-shot of the 4 funnel ship tilting as it speeds along and then a few minutes later just the stern slipping quietly beneath the waves is as infuriating in its visual cheat as THE LAST VOYAGE using stock footage for the stern shot. There is also a TV version of TITANIC and BRITANNIC + SOS TITANIC and of course Cameron's mighty film. Why someone just does not film THE VIOLET JESSOP STORY and be done with the 3 White Star liners in one movie is a great missed opportunity. Violet Jessop was the nurse who, in real life, was on board OLYMPIC when it collided with a coal freighter, she then survived TITANIC and then sailed on BRITANNIC and survived that sinking too! Now That's a story!
Review of Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea
