Sanctum Should Be A Silent Picture

The heros in this movie are air and light, while the villains are stone and water. I mean except for the fact that air allows the characters to speak, which allows for some of the worst dialogue ever written. Still, when noone is talking, Sanctum offers a cinematic experience of the wonder and terror of caves like no other.

Based on a true story, the film follows an expedition probing the world's largest unexplored cavern: Esa'ala in Papua New Guinea.  Get ready to squirm in your seat. Get ready to feel claustrophic. Do you think people who revere elemental forces are primitives? They're not; they're realists. The rest of us suffer delusions of grandeur. You'll appreciate having space to breathe after this flick.

Another sad note is how this James Cameron movie portrays women. They aren't less-muscled but more-beautiful treasures to be protected as in age-of-chivalry Titanic. Nor are they combat-booted kickers-of-all-male-asses as in politically-correct Avatar. They're expedition components to be disposed of quickly should they prove one iota less capable of repressing their emotions than their harsh robotic male comrades.

Seeing women coldly eliminated by such calculating cads was worse for me than seeing them heatedly raped by drooling vikings. I've always stood up for the equal value of men and women, but I don't get too excited about viewing them as androgynous interchangable units like the pieces on a Mister Potato Head, and I'll be damned before I'll watch a woman drown while I'm still breathing and my departed mother is watching me. Gender equality: definitivamente! Gender uniformity: no gracias.