DEEP BLUE SEA
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1999 Christopher Null
filmcritic.com
It's been a few years since a good shark movie, and while LAKE PLACID played games with the monster movie genre, DEEP BLUE SEA aims to please with an old-fashioned thriller where, once again, the beasts are much smarter than the prey (the people).
The story is familiar – genetic tampering makes sharks brilliantly intelligent – and they want nothing more than to eat people. Along the food chain are Samuel Jackson, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, and Michael Rapaport. But most notable is rapper LL Cool J as a cook/preacher who provides much-needed comic relief to the proceedings.
Burrows and Jackson are also fun (with Burrows redeeming herself for the debacle of WING COMMANDER earlier this year), and a mostly clever and zippy script keeps the film alive. Director Renny Harlin seems to be back in decent form, too. And the CGI sharks are awfully well-done, with some of the best biting-a-person-in-half sequences ever put on film, he said, only slightly sarcastically.
Ultimately, DEEP BLUE SEA lands somewhere between THE ABYSS and LEVIATHAN in the pantheon of underwater monster thrillers. It's not great and it doesn't suck, but it'll get your date to jump into your lap, and that's really what a movie like this is all about, right?
RATING: ***1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Renny Harlin Producer: Akiva Goldsman, Robert Kosberg, Tony Ludwig, Alan Riche Writer: Duncan Kennedy, Wayne Powers, Donna Powers Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Stellan Skarsgard, LL Cool J, Michael Rapaport
http://www.wb-deepbluesea.com/
Christopher Null - null@filmcritic.com - http://www.filmcritic.com Author - Network Administrator's Reference, 1999, ISBN 0-07-882588-1 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0078825881/filmcriticcom
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