SINK THE TITANIC

THE NAVY. It's more than a job, it's a far-fetched salvage operation. When ensigns tire of defending our shores or learning exciting technical skills that will help them land rewarding civilian jobs, they have an option. "I want to go down in a Jules Verne-submarine," they can demand, and before long they'll be on location, somewhere in the Atlantic, driving around bathyscapes in search of the ship "even God couldn't sink." Some of the submarines "implode" (burst apart at the seams to the detriment of their crews), but others survive to pump the hull of the 900-foot liner full of foam ("Gillette Foamy is rich and thick enough..."). A few dynamite charges shake the hull free of the bottom and then, glug, glug, glug, here she comes, surging to the surface where she sits, muddy and wet but otherwise unharmed.

Why, you might ask, did the Navy decide to refloat the Titantic, lost to an iceberg in 1912 on its maiden voyage? The lesson of this movie is that the fewer questions of this sort you ask, the better off you are. If Twentieth-Century Fox had hired Jacques Cousteau to make this film, it probably would have been fascinating. But why film something fascinating when you have a $20 million budget? And anyways, every other movie has spies and sex and actors, right? So, to answer the question of motive, the writers concocted a plot that wastes most of the two hours: Byzanium, not scientific curiosity or the quest for adventure, is the motivation for refloating the Titantic.

And what is byzanium? It's super-uranium, only found on one island off the coast of Russia. It will power the Sicilian project, a laser curtain to shield capitalism and democracy from the trigger-happy Bolsheviks. With typical American foresight, a miner dug all of it up in 1912, before the radio, much less the laser, was more than a glimmer in the mind of some scientist. The miner, with somewhat less foresight, set sail a few weeks later on, you guessed it, see the pieces beginning to fall into place, the Titanic. Pretty good plot, huh? If you've ever seen Get Smart, imagine what Don Adams could do with a few million for special effects.

With a story like this, one might think actors would be superfluous. A narrator, maybe Lloyd Bridges, could explain the action for a few minutes at the start, break for a Mutual of Omaha commercial ("the armadillo has natural protection, but people have to rely on..") and then get straight to the underwater photography. Instead, we get stars.

Jason Robards plays an admiral, the man in charge of the Sicilian Project and hence the Titanic resurfacing. Richard Jordan is Dirk Pitt, a retired Navy intelligence officer so daring that he's asked to supervise the salvage operation ("He'll only take a crack at something if it sounds impossible; otherwise he wants no part of it," says Admiral Robards of his mercenary friend). And David Selby is Dr. Seagram, a scientist who, somewhat inexplicably, learned enough at Cal Poly to both devise the laser shield and figure out how to find the Titanic. There is even a woman, Anne Archer, who plays a reporter for The Washington Star.

This confluence of talent introduces several intriguing angles. For instance, Jameson thought it might be interesting if two men loved the same woman, so both Pitt and Seagram trail after the Star reporter. One scene shows the emotional depth, the intensity of this menage a trois. "I told a fib," the reporter tells the scientist and proceeds to explain that indeed she and the mercenary had lived under the same roof for two years. The reporter's best line, though, a strong rebuff to the notion that Hollywood doesn't create any parts for strong women, comes while she fishes with the scientist. "I'm a dynamite fisher-person," she explains. "I just don't like to put the wormy on the hooky." Swear to God. Even the producers must have realized the scene was getting out of hand, because seconds later a helicopter appears. "Are you Dr. Seagram?" a man asks through a bullhorn from the window of the chopper. "I've come to take you back to Washington. Government orders."

Understandably, the Russians are upset that America plans to go the Iron Curtain one better. But this picture will enlighten all Gov 20 students laboring under the belief that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is run from Moscow. Apparently acting independently, the Russian ambassador to America decides that the capitalists "must be stopped--at any cost." The Russians plan to resink the Titanic. Once it is raised, the clever foreigners phone in a false distress call, deluding the good-hearted American destroyer guarding the resurrected liner into leaving. Then, a Russian envoy boards with the news that the Russian "research vessel" is actually a warship (will they stop at nothing?) and adds that the Titanic will be torpedoed "in exactly eight minutes." The Americans, surely, are up an ocean. But no--resourcefully, they have ordered a nuclear submarine to stand by. It surfaces and the Russians leave.

Would it hurt if I told you that in the end this is all a shaggy dog story that it turns out there was absolutely no reason to have raised the Titanic, except that it sure looks mighty fine steaming into New York Harbor? "It's just as well," Robards says when the byzanium turns out to be quarry gravel. "Someday, someone would have put this to offensive use. They would have built a byzanium bomb." Why then, he is asked, did he spend five years looking for the stuff? "If anyone was going to do it, I wanted it to be us," Robards said. This movie, had it been made in time, might have supplanted Patton as Richard Nixon's favorite flick.

Titanic does have a little of what the Supreme Court called "redeeming social value," though probably less than Caligula. There are five minutes of long, sweeping camera shots that show the ship resurfacing--a cleverly constructed 65-foot model that captures all the detail but somehow doesn't make the ship appear as looming as it did in real life. Jameson should have spent a few minutes exploring the ship, poking his camera into the staterooms and galleries that were the pride of the White Star Line when the ship set sail from Southhampton.

And one actor--Alec Guinness--turns in a wonderful performance. Nothing too hard, just a crusty old salt who had shipped on the Titanic. But Guinness plays with every line and glance. Alongside the rest of the cast, his prowess is painful.

When the Titanic went down, a banner headline in the Los Angeles Examiner read "Titanic Sinks; Many Millionaires Reported Drowned." Lord Lew Grade, who put up the money for Raise the Titanic, deserves, if not to drown, then at least to take a bath.

It's not a job, it's an adventure!