This was one big ship and one big movie.  James Cameron who wrote, directed and co-produced this movie spent 200 million dollars making the Titanic and you can see how they spent the money.

    Titanic starts off slow and to be honest, I was thinking that the over three hour running time might be a bit much.  However, I was wrong.  When the Titanic got going at full steam ahead, it took viewers along for both an awesome and hellacious spectacle.  The special effects showcasing the ship's break-up and eventual sinking were amazingly well done.  The point where the ship broke in half and one end raised itself out of the cold depths of the Atlantic until it was perpendicular to the water and the corresponding effect on those passengers still clinging to the top deck of the ship was like some flume ride gone wrong at Great Adventure.

    Titanic also featured a Romeo and Juliet-esque love story between Rose, a Philadelphia debutante and first-class passenger (played by the ethereally beautiful Kate Winslet) and Jack Dawson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio who truly comes into his own as a leading actor in this movie), a poor artist traveling in steerage.  Their relationship was hauntingly touching and had a genteel eroticism to it.  Billy Zane also puts in a good performance as Winslet's smug and amoral steel magnate fiancee.

    One complaint is that they didn't flesh out enough of why the Titanic went down.  Yes, the arrogance and overconfidence of its builders and its crew were hinted at by Cameron but it was not explored in a satisfactory manner and, truly it is the most interesting aspect of such a utterly preventable tragedy.

    So, the Titanic doesn't sink in terms of quality but one feels its filmmaker did, by making a movie for such a god awful amount of money, the bar has been raised to a seemingly insurmountable level for this film to make a substantial profit.   In the end, Titanic will most likely not sink at the box office especially since its foreign grosses will almost assuredly put this movie in the black.