James Cameron's opus begins with submarine crash then the introduction of a deep-sea oil drilling team led by Ed Harris (Virgil). They reside hundreds of feet below the ocean surface on Deepcore, the first underwater drilling platform. We are quickly introduced to the motley crew and then discover that they are the only hope for finding and recovering this debilitated nuclear submarine. The crew of Deepcore (likened to Truckers) jumps at the chance to earn triple scale and agree to hosting a team of Navy SEALS to help with the recovery.

With the SEAL team accompanied by Harris' ex-wife, the designer of Deepcore (Lindsey Brigman - Mary Elizabeth Masterantonio) to throw some conflict under the water we quickly find out that the true mission isn't to recovery the sub, but get the nuclear bombs from it before the 'Russian's get their hands them'. Tension mounts when one of the Deepcore crew has an out of body experience, goes into a coma and the leader of the SEALS, Lt. Coffey (Brilliantly portrayed by Michael Biehn) is slowly being driven crazy with HPNS (High Pressure Nervous Syndrome) due to the pressure change. In the meantime, on the surface, relations between the US and Soviet governments are going afoul. A storm cuts off contact with Deepcore and severely damages the underwater platform as well. Back underwater, with a million things going wrong on Deepcore; water flooding in, systems crashing and a psychotic SEAL trying to detonate a nuclear bomb Lindsey has quite an experience of her own. She encounters an NTI (Non Terrestrial Intelligence). Coffey discovers this and decides to do what any good ole SEAL would do, destroy it with a nuclear bomb.

The crew of Deepcore and the remaining SEAL make a final stand against Coffey to no avail and discover they will have to send someone down to the depths to disarm the bomb. Oh by the way, up on the surface Tension is still mounting between the US and Soviets, threatening WWIII. By using some fantastic technology (that actually exists) Virgil is sent down into the depths to disarm the weapon. We are treated with a wonderful underwater colony and some pretty neat special effects when brought into the world of the NTI's. But here the story takes an odd turn. Virgil meets the NTI's, they fix Deepcore and the movie ends with everyone happy.

Now, this DVD contains the extended directors cut of the movie (a few of you may have seen it, it has been shown on the Sci-fi network), which adds an additional 28 minutes of footage. The most notable addition being the plot. Sitting watching the extended version turns this movie from a B movie into an A movie. The Abyss preformed pretty badly at the box office as people came out of it feeling very upset with the extremely anti-climatic ending. The extended cut changes that attitude greatly and shows us what a great director Cameron really is. If you have never seen this cut, please take my advice and go find a way to see it. It dramatically changes the viewing experience by widening the scope or scale of the movie and making it into an event.

In addition to the fantastic Directors cut another ultimate payoff of this DVD is the insight into the undertaking of this massive production. Perhaps the best 'making of' documentary ever released, Under Pressure: Making The Abyss is waves better than the original theatrical release of the film. It is a brilliant look at an obsessive filmmaker creating his own Citizen Kane. We see the monster that is Cameron, both brilliant and fanatically trying to complete this film. Budgets increasing day over day, actors threatening to quit and then accepting the extreme punishment that was making this movie only because Cameron was taking more.

The DVD is worth owning based on these two items above. Other DVD features include some very nice animated menus to some very boring (click, click, click, click) behind the scenes pictures, storyboards and text (script/storyboards).

At the end of the day when I saw this movie in the theatre I thought the idea of shooting a film underwater was pretty damn interesting but the didn't really like the movie. This DVD has finally swayed me over and I say to you all, it's worth it.

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