Deep Blue Sea (1999)

reviewed by
Kent Johnson


DEEP BLUE SEA
USA, 1999
Directed by Renny Harlin
Reviewed by Kent Johnson

Tagline: "You'll believe a shark can suck."

DEEP BLUE SEA is a monster movie about sharks whose brain size and intelligence are accidentally quintupled by genetic experiments (by those darn do-gooder scientists who just won't leave well enough alone) terrorizing an ocean research facility.

The film has great visuals, great underwater photography, great sets, reasonably convincing animatronic sharks, a good soundtrack, and a lead actress (Saffron Burrows) with a gorgeous face and a deliciously throaty British accent. The filming must have must physically grueling for the actors and enough money seems to have been spent to support a small country for a year (not to mention enough water to irrigate all their crops).

Unfortunately, all of this is in support of an incredibly stupid story.

First there are the standard Hollywood flaws: The plot is completely lacking in logic, the characters have no depth and behave stupidly in order to provide suspense and, the most disappointing for a movie about smart sharks, the sharks are mere plot devices rather than characters, possessed of incredible speed, unlikely physical abilities and supernatural knowledge when convenient to generate suspense, mayhem and gotchas, but suddenly lacking all these qualities when they're inconvenient for the characters' survival.

On top of this, the film has several features that push it over into the "actively offensive" category:

1) An annoying, heavy-handed and insincere Christian subtext, seemingly designed to deflect censorship groups who might otherwise protest the film's violence.

2) A heavy-handed and insincere pro-black stance.

3) A heavy-handed anti-genetics-research message.

4) And, in keeping with its appease-the-censorship-groups policy, a near-complete lack of the female body. (A difficult feat for a film with beautiful women and this much water -- normally the province of bikinis, wet t-shirts and form-fitting scuba suits. In fact we see very little of the actresses other than their faces.)

The film seems to have been custom-designed for censorship groups with the intelligence of the average shark. I hope they enjoy it , since no one else will.

Not Recommended.

Not worth renting on video either, since the visuals are the film's only virtue and won't be that impressive on the small screen.

_______________
Kent Johnson
San Francisco
kjohnson@slip.net

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