Crew
Director/Teleplay – Jean De Segonzac, Story – Torsten Dewi, Producers – Marlow De Mardt & Brigid Olen, Photography – Giulio Biccari, Music – Gert Wilden Jr., Visual Effects Supervisor – Pierre De Lespinois, Visual Effects – Lumiere VFX, Inc. (Supervisor – Bret St. Clair), Special Effects Supervisor – Mickey Kirsten, Production Design – Tom Hannam. Production Company – Tandem Communications/ProSebien Television/Sci Fi Channel.
Cast
Ian Somerhalder (Jack Kubiak), James Brolin (John “Pa” Kubiak), Bettina Zimmerman (Giovanna Becker), Jamie Thomas King (Thomas Kubiak), Elodie Frenck (Cara Cahill), Ben Cross (Nicholas Filiminov), Michael Mendl (Cardinal Battaglia), Jeremy Crutchley (Father Giacopetti), Peter Butler (Brother Fontana), Tamsin McCarthy (Renault)
Plot
The year 2048. The polar ice caps have melted due to global warming and most cities are buried under water. John Kubiak runs a salvage operation with his two sons Jack and Thomas, diving for artefacts in the sunken cities. He retrieves a Bible on behalf of the New Vatican. This contains clues leading to a sceptre that the church seeks, supposedly the one used by Moses to part the Red Sea, which they believe will drive back the rising waters. John is sent to dive and retrieve a box containing the sceptre but when the box is opened this is missing. The trail leads them on to the ruins of Dresden. Meanwhile, Jack’s ex, geologist Giovanna Becker, who has radical theories about being able to open up the ground and drain the waters, is recruited by real estate developer Nicholas Filiminov for a rival expedition to obtain the sceptre before they do.
Lost City Raiders was a Canadian/German production made as a TV Movie for the Syfy Channel (back when it was still called the Sci Fi Channel). The production was shot in Cape Town.
Lost City Raiders is an odd mash-up of genres. It steals the basic scenario of Waterworld (1995) of the world having been flooded by the melted polar ice caps – although this does not quite go as far as Waterworld did and have no dry land; here there is still some land and the half-submerged ruins of buildings. The other aspect borrowed is the whole Adventure Film tomb raiding trope from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Lara Croft et al. The plot has the party engaged in a hunt for a mystical artefact – supposedly the staff used by Moses to part the Red Sea.
During the tour of the world in the opening narration, the film provides us with some quite decent visual effects shots of buildings and monuments – the Eiffel Tower, Christ of the Andes, the Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood sign and the Coliseum – half-underwater. There are interesting hints of a world that has adjusted to these changes – bustling floating shantytowns, a black market in retrieved goods, a New Vatican, Ben Cross as an evil real estate developer trying to gain more land.
It is a set-up that is interesting but possibilities are largely killed by director Jean de Segonzac’s strictly middle-of-the-road tv handling. A film like what Lost City Raiders is seeking to emulate – the Indiana Jones films, even lesser copies like the Lara Croft films – are driven by dramatic action set-pieces. However, the tomb raiding ventures here are unremarkable and lacking in dramatic excitement. The sole exception is a reasonable sequence chasing around the shipyards of Dresden on jet skis.
The other big improbability of the film is employing a trope like Moses’ magic sceptre (something that does not exist in The Book of Exodus), which has the power to turn back the floodwaters. It seems a far-fetched plot device to introduce and stretches way beyond the SF scenario the film charts out for itself into something that belongs more in a fantasy series like The Librarians (2014-8).
Director Jean de Segonzac has elsewhere directed numerous episodes of tv series such as Homicide: Life on the Streets, Oz and the various incarnations of Law and Order. de Segonzac’s only other genre works were Ice (1998) about the onset of a new Ice Age and Mimic 2 (2001).
Trailer here