A 1997 romance-disaster epic, 194 minutes long, in which the boat's fate is a matter of public record and the running time is a matter of open litigation. Matt defended it as the last great built-for-real Hollywood epic. Norm submitted an 86-minute tax invoice — the largest ever filed — and rested. Management voided the invoice and ruled the thumb up, which is notable because no formal case before this court had ever gone Matt's way. Norm has requested the court's financial records. The request was noted for the file and denied.
Nineteen ninety-seven. Two studios pooling money in a panic, a director building a 90-percent-scale ocean liner in a purpose-built tank in Baja, a budget the trades called suicidal — and out the other side comes the biggest movie ever made to that point and eleven Academy Awards, tying the all-time record. I want to be clear about what I’m defending, because it is not just the movie. I am defending the method. They built the ship. When it tilts, a real thing is tilting, with real stuntmen sliding down a real deck, and your spine knows the difference even when your film-critic brain pretends otherwise.
“Everyone remembers the romance. Nobody remembers that the last hour of this movie is one of the greatest sustained disaster sequences ever put on film — shot mostly for real, in cold water, at night.”
And the structure is smarter than its reputation. The modern-day frame isn’t padding; it’s a loaded gun. You spend three hours learning every corridor of that ship precisely so that when the water comes, you know exactly what’s flooding. That’s not runtime. That’s ammunition. My colleague calls it an invoice; I call it the last time Hollywood paid full price for anything. Thumb up — and for the benefit of the historical record, please note the date, because upstairs agrees with me.
Let me do this by the numbers, since no one else in this building will. One hundred ninety-four minutes, less the 108 covered under Rule 02, leaves an overage of EIGHTY-SIX MINUTES — the largest invoice this office has ever issued, and I have issued invoices to Peter Jackson. Second: the ending is not a twist. The boat’s outcome has been public information since 1912. A three-hour countdown to a foregone conclusion is not suspense; it’s a ferry schedule.
“I checked my watch so many times during the first half that the man next to me asked if I was expecting someone. I was. I was expecting the iceberg.”
Credit where owed, because I’m a professional: the last hour is legitimately great filmmaking — cold, procedural, honest about physics and class in roughly equal measure — and if Cameron had delivered that film at 108 minutes, we would be printing a different review. But I do not pay for a great third act with two hours of ballroom choreography, and I do not accept “they built the ship” as an argument. The White Star Line built the ship too. Look how that went. Thumb down, invoice attached, and I want my objection to tonight’s ruling recorded in bold.
Let's dispose of the jurisdictional complaint first: yes, it's a romance. It is also a disaster thriller with a ticking clock, a heist subplot involving a diamond, and a frame story that is — I will say this slowly for the benefit of the second floor — a MYSTERY, told by a 101-year-old unreliable witness to a treasure crew. Three of my four favorite genres are on that boat. As for the invoice: Rule 02 exists to punish padding, and there is no padding on a ship this size — the picture spends its first half building a floor so the second half can tilt it. The 86-minute invoice is voided, the thumb is up, and one more thing for the file: whether the door had room for two is NOT before this court and will not be heard. Ratified. Matt — stop smiling. It's unbecoming and it will not recur.