Pressure (2015)

As a retired commercial diver, this was hard to watch. While I don't expect them to get every detail right, they almost didn't get any details right. Its awful. I could list hundreds of things. First up on the descent, it takes hours and hours (about 4 from memory) to get to 660 feet, not an hour. His shampoo explodes because he does not take of the top during decent, and while you would do that, it would actually implode on the way down. Just saying. No such thing as a big bell and certainly not with two rooms to it! Helium costs big money, so they make bells as small as the can. Never seen a 4 man bell myself, but even so, it would be as small as a 3 man bell. They did bother to do ''bell checks'' on which the survival suits are listed (which they find missing when they need them) . Sever the umbilical to the ship, you lose hot water, which they try to reflect in the diving with the divers being very cold, but forget to tell the viewer why the divers are cold. Lose hot water, and you have no heater, as that is how they work! They use the sound powered phone for most things, when you have direct comms to the bell over the speaker/microphone and no bell I have ever been in, could possibly have comms to reach a ship. In fact it is one of our biggest problems. You come up with perfect comms from diver to topside, bell to topside, bell to diver and diver to diver and you would be an over night multi millionaire. So far I have not really had to much in the way of a spoiler, but I am about to now , so if that is a problem, read no further....... *spoiler alert* When they try to float the bell, there is a step by step you must take and one of those steps is to use the umbilical cutter. Its a manual hydraulic cutter operated from inside the bell. If you don't cut that, you likely wont get far. So these people didn't bother, get caught up and have to basically free swim the rest of the way. So from memory they go from 660 feet to 250 feet or less them open the door (you need to equalize pressure first) them out and up. Arh, NO! You would never make the surface alive and I do not know how you would even be dropping that pressure to 250 feet. I mean that is going to hurt bad and kill you also, but might take some time. But either way, you are not going to be alive when you hit the surface. Very lazy film making, very lazy indeed

This review contains huge spoilers. Saw this movie in hope of a thrilling claustrophobic experience. But this was a disappointment. First of all the plot feels thin. Why is there a oil pipeline on the ocean floor outside Somalia? Why would a ship ever have thrown anchor in these pirate infested waters?Then the real crimes against the laws of nature begins. One of the divers has brought a bottle of shampoo in to the diving bell. A bell where there are no visible reasons to bring any hygiene products at all. When starting to descend another diver warns him about the risk of having it explode! because the increased pressure in the bell. That would of course only make the bottle less likely to leak. But the moment after the diver opens the lid and gets sprayed with shampoo. When finally ascending they argue about the risk of the bell not being capable of handling the shift in pressure. Most likely, the bell will be okay with a decreased pressure. Like this the movie goes on with total ignorance of what is realistic in a deep sea adventure. Just a waste of time in my opinion.

This movie was part of my B movie genre one afternoon. I usually am not the thriller type, I typically prefer more action adventure oriented (Deep Star 6, The Abyss etc...) There were elements that reminded me of Das Boot. However I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it. The Good: The acting was surprisingly good, the script writing was good, the effects were good. The Bad: The plot is a little predictable at times, but this is just an adaptation of Lifeboat. Character development could have been a little better, I didn't feel as invested in any of the characters as I felt I should have. Generally I did enjoy it, I probably will not watch is again, but I would recommend it to anyone

"Pressure" concerns a group of men (Danny Huston, Matthew Goode, Joe Cole, and Ian Pirie), who are submerged in the depths of the Indian Ocean in a small submarine to replace an oil pipeline. However, once their submarine malfunctions, the crew are separated from their base and stuck in the deep waters with no connection to their base and oxygen levels running dangerously low. To survive, the men must conserve their energy and their air in hopes that a rescue team hasn't completely abandoned them in the ocean."Pressure" is one of the first films in quite sometime to have the gall to take place in one setting, effectively trapping the audience, much like the characters, in a tight, claustrophobic space, giving the audience the feeling of helplessness and peril. The great thing about these films is they open rely on tension and character development being that the setting isn't changing, so new environments and interactions aren't always being set up. The downside to this, however, is that when films to choose to focus on stunted dialog and lax character development, these films generally begin to become uninteresting.Such a thing happens with "Pressure;" we have four characters, two of which played by veteran actors, and not a shred of human interest to be found. The characters predominately speak in stunted expressions about wanting to be rescued or argue amongst themselves, and when we do begin to learn about their own personal histories, there's little in the way of conversational realism to attach us.The film does feature some very nice effects work, specifically on the water and the atmosphere engulfing the ship. The waters are a lighter indigo-color, murky and unrelenting, and scenes when some of the men venture out of the submarine in attempt to swim to shore really exploit the capable effects work in this film. Director Ron Scalpello also manages to create some discernible intensity with the film by having medium-length, extreme close-ups on the faces of the trapped men inside the submarine. While "Pressure" make lack narratively, and have little to grip one in terms of human interest, there's at least a commendable focus on the aesthetics in an attempt to try and create a tense setting.Above all, however, the real bother is a serious lack of any character to root for or invest in, which makes "Pressure"'s slender runtime of eighty-eight minutes rather grueling to sit through. The characters are almost entirely vapid, the tension is sporadic and sometimes wholly ineffective, the pace finds itself simultaneously working in a slowburn and a slam-bang manner, and the overall impact is middling to say the least.