Dylan and Ramsey couldn’t be more different. Where Dylan is wary of assuming responsibility for the others and fears it will slow him down, Ramsey embodies a lifetime of leadership – for better or worse. Having met briefly on board and sized each other up over a tense poker standoff, the two men begin their odyssey already at odds. Says Lucas, “Dylan’s selfishness offends Ramsey at his core and Ramsey’s take-charge manner gets Dylan’s back up.”
Kurt Russell, who stars as Robert Ramsey, notes that one of the things he likes about the movie is how, “It allows you to get to know these people without being told explicitly who they are. Ramsey used to be a fire fighter who became mayor of a large city. He’s recently divorced and no longer in office and, ironically, he’s on this cruise to get away from an environment that has become very pressurized.”
Part of that pressure is his loving but difficult relationship with his headstrong 19-yearold daughter Jennifer, accompanying Ramsey on the cruise with her boyfriend, Christian. Rescuing Jennifer becomes Ramsey’s prime focus after the ship is hit. Whatever his failings as a father, a husband or an elected official, all that matters now is ensuring her safety and that means making his way to the floor above the ballroom, to the disco where the young couple went to ring in the new year – now a smoky ruin, where electricity and water make a fatal mix and Jennifer struggles to free Christian, trapped beneath a mass of metal.
From Ramsey’s pragmatic point of view, Russell notes, “When a ship capsizes like that, you only have two choices: you can stay in this one room where there’s still some air and hope you’ll be rescued before the ship goes down completely, or you can trust that feeling inside that tells you to take matters into your own hands and try to save your own life.”
Russell handled much of his own stunt work on Poseidon, a standard he has maintained throughout a remarkable career that began when he was only 10 years old. He has earned a lifetime of acclaim, including an Emmy Award nomination for his dead-on portrayal in the title role of ABC’s 1979 biopic Elvis and a Golden Globe nomination for Silkwood. Reflecting on the sometimes random nature of relationships that could literally save your life, he remarks on how strange it is, “To think that the most important few hours of your entire existence could be spent with people you barely know. Perhaps you don’t even know their names.”
Starring as young Jennifer is Golden Globe nominee Emmy Rossum (The Phantom of the Opera), and as her boyfriend Christian is Mike Vogel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). As the cruise begins, Jennifer, secretly engaged to Christian, is ambivalent about breaking the news to her over-protective single father. It is not his disapproval or denial that she really fears because she is clearly a spirited young woman who will stand her ground. “It’s more that she’s afraid of hurting her father by ‘abandoning’ him,” explains Rossum. “She loves her father. He’s always been there for her and now she’s at a point in her life where she’s fallen in love and wants to transfer her allegiance to the man she loves and she’s really torn between the two of them.
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