The Smokers' attack on the atoll is a virtuoso action sequence, including stunts where guys on jet skis speed up a ramp and fly over the atoll walls, landing in the lagoon inside. (It's a little strange to see Hells Angels types doing the same basic water-ski stunts perfected 50 years ago in all those Esther Williams pictures set at Cypress Gardens.) Mariner is freed by Helen, whose price is that he must help her and a young girl named Enola (Tina Majorino) escape. He's forced to agree, and soon they're sailing the high seas and squabbling ("This is my boat, and I got it the way I like it"). Mariner would just as soon throw Helen and the girl overboard, but we know the obligatory outcome: He'll get to like them. He does, grudgingly, and then discovers the Smokers want the girl because she has a map tattooed on her back that shows the way to land. The relationship scenes are pretty grim, apart from a long-delayed kiss and a breathtaking visit beneath the waves to visit a drowned city.
There are a lot of amazing props in the movie, including various flying and sailing machines and medieval; futuristic weapons.
And a few smiles, as when the Deacon's ship turns out to be the Exxon Valdez (with a portrait of Captain Joe Hazelwood still on display). I am not quite sure, however, that I believed the scene where Deacon fires up his men with promises of dry land, and they all troop down into the hold of the Valdez and start rowing it like a Roman galley.
Kevin Costner obviously decided to play his character as a poker-faced outsider, not entirely human, and although that's a logical choice it isn't a very entertaining one; Mel Gibson, in a similar role as Mad Max, went for energy and good humor, and was more fun. There is also a certain lack of imagination in the story. These floating people have the whole globe to explore, but they seem to hang out in the same small patch of sea with the same characters. Are there different cultures elsewhere? Different adaptations to the flood? The movie doesn't care.
It's said "Waterworld's" first cut was a good deal longer than its final 120-minute running time, and you can sense that occasionally, as when the Mariner fights off an attack by the Smokers and then immediately takes Helen on the trip beneath the sea, when it seems the Smokers must still be in sight. But basically the movie plays smoothly as a combination of chases, fights, bizarre locations, special effects, and the cold, distant, slowly thawing behavior of Mariner toward his passengers. I'll remember some of the sights in "Waterworld" for a long time. But I won't necessarily want to see them again.
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