In the Indian Ocean, a diving bell with a crew opts to make repairs with a storm coming. S@#t happens and it becomes a fight for life among a crew that doesn't always get along. The acting was Goode, but the storyline grew old. I can only take so much drama of people trapped in one place. This is a drama/thriller and not a horror. Not much more exciting than the cover art. Guide: F-bomb, FF nudity (Gemita Samarra)

Perhaps even more than planes, submarines (or similar vehicles) are perfect for thrillers. The idea of being stuck in a few rooms underwater, running out of oxygen, with only a thin steel shell between you and the cold black sea, is inherently suspenseful. I cannot think of a really terrible submarine flick - it takes an impressive lack of talent to waste this scenario.Pressure is... decent. It does nothing novel, makes a few missteps, but it was interesting enough to hold my attention. Four divers are trapped in a pod at the bottom of the ocean, with only a few hours of oxygen and an ugly dilemma: do they just wait for help (which may or may not be coming), or instead risk their lives (and more oxygen!) to attempt a dangerous escape.The most interesting character is veteran Engel, played by Danny Huston as someone who is competent but not infallible. Sadly, he is saddled with a rather hackneyed backstory. At first we get brief creepy flashbacks with a young woman covered with blood - it turns out she was his girlfriend (never mind she looks like she could be Huston's teenage daughter) who died in a car crash. Engel then let the other driver (who caused the accident) drown along with his family. Guess who is looking for redemption now? It's overly melodramatic stuff - to make it even more heavy-handed, the kid in the car looks like the youngest crew member, Jones (Joe Cole). Speaking of Jones, he is involved in another portentous scene, where he hallucinates and sees a naked woman who, mermaid-like, at first kisses him, then bites him viciously. It's fairly silly. The more realistic scenes are better - like when Mitchell (Matthew Goode) finds himself among a swarm of jellyfish.Of course, Jones reveals his girlfriend is pregnant. What's up with rookies and their partners in submarine movies? The recent Black Sea did the exact same thing. And the young officer in K-19 also obsessed over his girlfriend; Bon Jovi in U- 571 had just been married... It's becoming a bigger cliché than the old cop on his last day of work.Still, Pressure is watchable. The submarine thriller/drama formula is pretty much foolproof - if not quite waterproof. *drum roll*6/10

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.