DEEP BLUE SEA Reviewed by Jamie Peck
Rating: *** (out of ****) Warner Bros. / 1:45 / 1999 / R (language, shark-attack gore) Cast: Thomas Jane; Saffron Burrows; Samuel L. Jackson, LL Cool J; Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie; Aida Turturro Director: Renny Harlin Screenplay: Duncan Kennedy; Wayne Powers; Donna Powers
For director Renny Harlin, it's good to go back in the water. Four years after his pirate debacle "Cutthroat Island" drowned at the box office and sank a studio - Carolco Films - Harlin is again plundering a mostly oceanic setting in "Deep Blue Sea." The surprising result: a movie with bite, and not just because this loud-and-proud thriller plays very much like "Jaws" on crank. A set-up that sounds supremely goofy still allows for plenty of monster-flick fun, from the game performances to the gory special effects to the grisly body count.
Forgive "Deep Blue Sea" of its wince-inducing exposition, which makes it seem destined for straight-to-video oblivion: Scientists aboard a floating laboratory in the Pacific, desperately searching for an Alzheimer's cure, have genetically enhanced mako sharks for their groovy brain tissue, only the test subjects turn on them after inadvertently gaining supersmarts from the experiment. Silly mortals. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, especially if Mother Nature is 25 feet long, 8,000 pounds heavy, irritable, fast and hungry.
These fierce fishies escape following an early mishap involving a gurney, a helicopter and wet walkways that reduces the principle cast by nearly a third and can also stand among the finest sequences Harlin has ever helmed - which is saying a lot, given that he's also overseen some uniquely eye-popping stunts in "Die Hard 2," "Cliffhanger" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight." The rest of "Deep Blue Sea" takes the form of a "Titanic"-"Jurassic Park" hybrid as our rag-tag team of heroes avoids snack status while escaping from their slowly submerging facility.
Character players like Michael Rapaport, Aida Turturro and Stellan Skarsgård are guaranteed goners as various nondescript hands, while the great Samuel L. Jackson - the movie's sole recognizable name - caps his stint as the study's bigshot bankroller with his typical dramatic fire. He and Oscar always seem to be mentioned in the same breath, but not this time. The real stories here the scary computer-generated and robot beasties, thrilling wall-to-wall carnage and a breakthrough performance from indie find Thomas Jane.
Jane - built, blonde and a Baltimore native to boot - makes for one memorable action figure, especially in scenes where his stoic but charismatic wrangler faces danger and returns a champ. He's the guy audiences will most want to see pull through without becoming human sushi, though LL Cool J rates a close second. As a religious cook who knows his way around a kitchen, this amiable rapper-cum-actor does for "Deep Blue Sea" what he did for "Halloween: H20" last summer - energize an effective creep show with a comic dimension.
But the ringmaster of this crafty creature feature is still Harlin. He knows when to comfortably cater to genre conventions - death-defying dangles, close shaves, situation-appropriate kiss-off lines - and when to stray from cliches, as evidenced by several tricks and treats thatll take many viewers by surprise. The pinnacle of these - a sudden, terrifying attack not, for once, foreshadowed by a stinging musical score or a tracking camera shot - is delicious, disorienting and altogether unexpected, just like the sum of "Deep Blue Sea."
© 1999 Jamie Peck E-mail: jpeck1@gl.umbc.edu Visit The Reel Deal Online: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~jpeck1/ "Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. ‘Armageddon' is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out." -Roger Ebert on "Armageddon"
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