April 18, 2024

This hasn't really anything much to do with the Titanic, it's more to do with the politically motivated inquiry carried out by American presidential hopeful Senator Smith (Cotter Smith). Immediately the news of the sinking breaks, he decides that he is going to appoint himself as the chairmen of a senatorial committee to investigate the tragedy. When the "RMS Carpathia" arrives in New York with survivors, he proceeds to arbitrarily detain them al… read the rest.

This hasn't really anything much to do with the Titanic, it's more to do with the politically motivated inquiry carried out by American presidential hopeful Senator Smith (Cotter Smith). Immediately the news of the sinking breaks, he decides that he is going to appoint himself as the chairmen of a senatorial committee to investigate the tragedy. When the "RMS Carpathia" arrives in New York with survivors, he proceeds to arbitrarily detain them all - reducing many to living on the streets eating from soup kitchens and huddling around bin-fires in the cold, while he plays judge and jury with the surviving crew and the White Star Line's manager director Bruce Ismay (Sam Turich). This way he can ensure he keeps his name in the papers and look like some sort of avenging angel. It's actually the papers who begin to prove the more honest of the assessors here, though, as young reporter "Alaine Ricard" (Fiona Dourif) quite perilously manages to get to the truth not just about what might have happened at sea that night, but of also identifying the senator's motives and the connection between US corporate interests and the likely commencement of the Great War in Europe. Karen Allen features for about two minutes as his supportive wife, thereafter this is just a really rather lacklustre television drama that I found increasingly difficult to take seriously. The interrogations by his committee are riddled with leading questions, hindsight and contradictions - to the point where anyone with the slightest of legal backgrounds would have told him to take an hike. It plays to just about every class stereotype you can imagine and even if it did have some legitimate points to make about what might have been preventable on the day and criticisms to make of the behaviour of some of those concerned, these were lost amongst the weakly written dialogue and the arrogance of the investigator. I am afraid this disappoints from start to the rather lacklustre conclusion. I'm surprised that this got a cinema release in the UK, it's really very poor.

show less