For years now, I have wished up and down that someone would have considered Adrian Paul fot the role of James Bond. Seriously. Alas, it turns out, it wasn’t meant to be. So what has Mr. Paul been doing? A new Highlander film of all things, due out this year or next. In the between time, I picked up one of his direct to video films, called ‘USS Poseidon: Phantom Below”. On one hand, it is well acted, well cast and never boring. On the other, the story suffers from cliches and borrowed plots -and stock shots- from better military techno thrillers. But to my discovery, (and shock) there is something else about the film that I did not know..That this film once traveled around a few film festivals last year under the name “Tides Of War”. The film was then shown on a Canadian cable TV channel. The DVD of ‘USS Poseidon’ did not contain any extras- and you would think that there would be, aside from a few trailers. I did not see the original version; I’m sure if I have, it would make a huge difference.

For the film in this (excuse this) ‘watered down’ version has the usual submarine tech speak that you may have heard in other films, plot points lifted right out of Tom Clancy’s Hunt For Red October” and Tony Scott’s “Crimson Tide” and tons of stock footage from both those films. I could have swown there was a stock shot from ‘Top Gun’ as well, but it isn’t as obvious. It was the stock footage, as well as some so-so to hokey CG depth charge explosions that annoyed me the most, because despite the cliches on board the sub, the actors rise to the occasion and overall triumph over whatever limitations were given to them.

In the DVD version, the story concerns Frank Habley, (Paul) a Naval Commander who takes his sub on a mission and North Korean sub spots them, and nearly destroys them. The enemy sub has a mysterious sonar scrambler or something onboard, never fully explained, but no one but Habley has seen the sub in question. For a sub that no one else has seen, what fired an endless stream of torpedoes at them isn’t a subtle hint, I don’t know what is. While escaping the ‘Phantom’ sub, two crew members die. One of the deceased. the XO, is a longtime friend of Habley’s. The XO has a melodramatic moment, as he dies holding a ‘lucky’ golf ball…and drops it moments after passing. Habley is court martialed (!) and suspended (!?) from duty. Okay, he blames himself for his buddy’s death, but he saved the sub and the crew. Not to mention that I do believe that if one were to sign up for the military, such things are a risk, life and death a reality. But there was that subplot that I learned about…

Anyway, there is a new top secret mission, and the Navy brass led by the always great character actor Kent McCord, assigns a new XO, Steven Barker (Mathew St. Patrick) to take the Poseidon back into North Korea waters and plant a little robot tha will ’spy’ on varied North Korean naval trasmissions by tapping into an underwater cable. They need Habley to be the Commander because of his knowledge of the area. But they also think he’s got a screw loose because he saw and heard the ‘phantom’ sub. If the new XO disagrees with any of Habley’s choices, he can relieve him of duty. This side deal is unknown to Habley, and it is the best part of the film. Another nice touch, although rather contrived, is having a team of specialists on the mission- one of whom is the sister of Habley’s late friend. Catherine Dent (TV’s “The Shield”, “Taken”) and lo and behold, the specialists ‘accidently’ discover the phantom sub. Barker, however, covers the information up at great risk to the crew. All and all, it isn’t suspenseful, and I never got much of a conflict between characters too much. But at least “Poseidon” isn’t boring. But it is routine.

And now…for the real depth charge about to drop.

There is a tad bit of footage cut out from the original cut of the film when it went by the name ‘Tides Of War’. It seems that Habley, who, looks a bit young for a submarine commander, also happened to be…gay? Yes, gay! Turns out his best friend who died was also his companion, and the sister didn’t care much for the union. Now, I don’t neccessarily agree with that lifestyle, but I have to fess up: this angle was the most original idea of the entire movie or would have been. This bit of news would make the character’s motivations more understandable, as it would fill in many blanks in the story. I don’t know why these scenes were left out of the film, seeing how they were witnessed on cable and elsewhere, so it has nothing to do with pacing. I don’t know why the scenes couldn’t have been in a ‘deleted scenes’ section. Or an audio commentary to tll the viewer what happened in the editing room. In any case, if I had to guess, I would say that this character arc was jettisoned for marketing issues. Maybe it’s easier to sell the Highlander actor in a ’straight’ military techno thriller than the alternative. Maybe the gay storyline was awkward and didn’t work at all. It is the real phantom mystery.

Yet it couldn’t be any worse than scribe Mark Sanderson’s simplistic dialog of “XO on the Com…”, “Commander On Deck”…”Launching Torpedoes!” and “Dive!Dive! Dive!” said over and over again, unless it has a more metaphorical meaning. The more I think about it and the dead friend holding the lucky golf ball, maybe the subtext…never mind. The film on the DVD is good, but not as good as it should have been, or could have been. All subtexts or cut scenes don’t excuse overused ‘Crimson Tide’ and ‘Red October’ footage and all the cliches remain.

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USS Poseidon : Phantom Below [aka 'Tides Of War']

Directed by: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Starring: Adrian Paul, Catherine Dent, Mathew St. Patrick, Kent McCord and Matt Battaglia.