MOVIE REVIEW - Sanctum

James Cameron gave us Titanic, and Avatar in recent memory. This weekend it's the new cave-exploring flick, Sanctum, in IMAX, 3-D or not.

Sanctum supposedly is "inspired" by actual events. It's the story of these world class explorers who find themselves tackling the worlds largest cave in New Guinea. It's not your regular huge cave, it is a series of air pockets and rivers. And the theory is that this cave although on land of course, has an entry deep in the ocean. That is their mission. To go where no person has every gone before and try to find the passage way to the ocean.

Then a cyclone pops up and the cave becomes partially flooded. And the basic story is, will our hero's be able to find their way out of the cave to safety? As pieces of their world class equipment becomes lost or destroyed, so do their lives as one by one they begin to perish. That is Sanctum.

Don't be reeled in by the James Cameron name on this flick. With Cameron, you always seem to get the same thing. A whole lot of emphasis on what they can do as film makers, with effects, bells and whistles, and very little of any form of original story. I felt that was Avatars glaring, almost embarrassing flaw. The story was old, tired and simply not original. So is Sanctum. Sanctum is simply a fancy, high dollar "people getting picked off one at a time" movie. Yeah, OK the 3-D is nice, and some of the underwater photography is well done. But that grows old in about 20 minutes. In story, you are way ahead of this flick. You know who is going to die and almost when. Very stereotypical plot and character development...what there is of it.

Hard to root for characters you don't care about, and you certainly don't care about these self absorbed, rich, under developed characters. As they drown or get killed, you are keeping count because you know that when we get down to one the end of this movie can't be far away. This story would be far more suited to be a documentary on PBS or the History Channel instead of a two hour feature movie. What happened to this group is a story worth telling, if in fact it really happened this way. But this movie is just one giant elephant foot stepping on your chest for two hours.

But this is not unusual for Cameron, who is terrific at times in the technical aspect of movie making. But I'm not sure he even reads the scripts writes or is given. Instead it seems he goes straight to the special effect folks. Good movies are stories first. Not all that happens in the world is right to be made into a movie. Sometimes PBS, or National Geographic is a better fit.

Sanctum is a bit boring, not at all endearing, and over all just a big let down.