Almost as ambitious in scope as his Titanic, James Cameron’s The Abyss is a more nuanced melding of large-scale action and intimate romance. When a U.S. nuclear submarine disappears into the ocean canyon that an oil crew is working above, a brusque team of Navy Seals arrives to perform a supposed rescue mission that may have ulterior motives. Amid the ensuing action is the best rising-water suspense sequence of all time, when an estranged couple from the oil crew (Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) are trapped in a flooding submersible with only one oxygen suit. It isn’t until they realize that only one of them can make it that they also realize they’re still in love.
