Pressure

The opening voiceover sounds like a piss-take – surely no film in 2015 could be this pompous. Over a backdrop of rolling waves, Danny Huston’s gravelly, portentous voice lists the reasons men go to sea – ‘because they’re lost,’ he finishes. ‘And they don’t want to be found.’ Come back Ernest Hemingway, all is forgiven.

And ‘Pressure’ doesn’t really improve from there. It’s the story of four deep-sea oil-pipe engineers – doomsaying sea-dog Huston, God-bothering nice-guy Matthew Goode, bitter alcoholic Alan McKenna and, inevitably, youngster-on-his-first-dive Joe Cole – whose diving bell is marooned at the bottom of the ocean when a storm wrecks their support vessel. Unable to resurface, the four men bicker, brawl and recount great chunks of awkwardly shoehorned back story.

‘Pressure’ really has nothing to recommend it: the dialogue is dire and the performances mediocre, though fans of Shatner-esque ham will get a kick out of Huston, and there’s a scene where Goode gets attacked by jellyfish that’s flat-out hilarious. The special effects are weak – the bell becomes trapped in a part of the Indian Ocean that looks suspiciously like the Pinewood wet-set – and the plot is achingly predictable. You’ll run out of patience long before they run out of oxygen.