**1/2 out of ****
Year: 1999. Starring Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane, LL Cool J, Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie, Stellan Skarsgård. Written by Duncan Kennedy, Wayne Powers, and Donna Powers. Directed by Renny Harlin. Rated R.
"Jaws" it ain't. It may have fearsome sharks chasing some humans around and certain scenes may bear some relation to scenes from the Spielberg classic, but "Deep Blue Sea" has neither the interesting characters nor the engrossing story of that film. It is, however, a pretty good summer flick that will keep you munching on your popcorn while it serves up everything a summer monster movie should. It's fun, thrilling, and totally unpredictable. In the end, unpredictability is what saves "Deep Blue Sea" from being a dull action movie and turns it into a decently entertaining thriller, one that will keep the audience on their toes.
Saffron Burrows plays Dr. Susan McAllister, a scientist studying sharks' brains in an attempt to find the cure for Alzheimer's Disease. After a shark escapes and assaults a boat full of teenagers, corporate honcho Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) gives her one last chance to prove the value of her work before her funding is pulled. She takes him out to the site, a huge underwater facility called Aquatica, so he can observe what happens there. After most of the crew leaves for the weekend, a skeleton crew is left behind, including shark hunter Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), computer expert Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport), scientist couple Janice Higgins (Jacqueline McKenzie) and Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgård), and Preach (LL Cool J), the religious cook. The sharks begin to exhibit signs of intelligence and, when a freak storm hits the facility, they take over, flooding entire sections of Aquatica and trying to eat the humans. It is eventually revealed that McAllister has violated ethical principles of science and increased the sharks' brain mass, making them smarter. The trapped humans must now try to outrun the sharks as well as outsmart them, while trying to figure out how to reach the surface.
"Deep Blue Sea" contains all the problems that most action films suffer from. First of all, the dialogue is trite, pathetic, and unconvincing. The plot also makes very little sense. The biggest problem is, of course, that Burrows' supposedly "brilliant" scientist hadn't figured out ahead of time that increasing the sharks' brain mass might make them a little smarter. The other big problem with the film's premise is that the simple fact that the sharks are now super-intelligent does not mean that they have seen full schematics of the facility, or that they know what materials were used to build it. "Deep Blue Sea" seems to make that assumption when explaining what the sharks are trying to accomplish. Furthermore, the characters are not terribly interesting, nor (with the exception of LL Cool J's Preach) are they terribly charismatic characters. Burrows is an irresponsible jerk, Jackson is pompous and self-satisfied, and the rest merely fill out the rest of the necessary stereotypes. All of these problems contribute to a dragged-out, boring, and infuriating first act, in which we are introduced in plodding fashion to these uninteresting characters who speak ridiculous dialogue. During these first 45 minutes or so, this critic was getting all geared up to proclaim "Deep Blue Sea" as the worst movie of 1999.
Then something happened. I won't give it away (that would be a crime), but director Renny Harlin sees fit to give us a death that happens so unexpectedly, at such a surprising time, and to such an unlikely victim, that I was forced to applaud for how the film had shocked me so successfully. The film manages to do many things with this one death. Not only does it kill one of its characters, but it sets up the idea that absolutely no one will be spared on the basis of race, creed, or box-office drawing ability. Let's face it, in most films of this nature, it's relatively easy to determine not only who will die, but also the order in which the murders will happen. In "Deep Blue Sea," this cannot be done. Harlin may be a hack, ripping off of "Jaws" and "Jaws 2" (though that may be considered as more of a tribute), but he at least knows how to surprise an audience and leave them shrieking with delight after the shocking scene is over with. The film has no obvious set-up for a death, with slowly rising music and many obvious shots of the approaching monster. In "Deep Blue Sea," the characters are sitting around during a supposed lull in the action, when suddenly, just when the audience least expects it, CHOMP! The shark has struck, it's all over, and the audience is struggling to catch its breath. In this age of overused special effects and directors with horrible shot selection, this film actually comes as a refreshing bit of fun, a tribute to B-movie scares that relied more on filmmaking savvy rather than fancy CGI effects.
Not that the effects in "Deep Blue Sea" aren't convincing. The mixture of real, animatronic, and computer-generated sharks make for an impressive package indeed, but it's not the number of effects Harlin uses, it's how he uses them. Like Spielberg did in "Jaws," Harlin makes sure that, when building a proper suspense sequence, we don't get to see the shark until absolutely necessary. Until then, an ominous underwater shadow followed by an approaching fin cutting through the surface is all we need. He also plays on monster movie conventions, especially the one that demands that black characters are not permitted to act intelligently, and that one of them must be killed first. In one of the film's better jokes, LL Cool J remarks, "I'm toast. Brothers never make it out of situations like this." His character is by far the most interesting, since he starts off like a typical ethnic Hollywood stereotype, that of the bumbling black service employee. Why, they even made him a religious man. Cool J, however, is able to transcend such convention and morph, rather suddenly, into a suave action hero, and the transformation is a welcome change.
So, "Deep Blue Sea" is an effects-driven monster movie that starts off lousy, but after one very surprising turn of events, becomes an effective thriller. Don't get me wrong. All the things that were wrong with the first act apply to the rest of the movie. The dialogue doesn't get any better, the plot still has major holes in it, and any character not played by a famous rapper remains a flimsy sketch of a person. If those are the sort of things that bother you, then you'll probably want to skip "Deep Blue Sea." If you' re willing to look past those shortcomings and just want to have a good time at the movies this summer, then this one will fit the bill. I'm giving "Deep Blue Sea" a recommendation because I was entertained despite the B-movie quality of the screenplay, and because the picture has one thing going for it: The element of surprise. That element will keep audiences on their toes as they engage in a futile effort to predict what will happen next. Any movie that can do that is a success in my book.
-reviewed by Shay Casey
For more reviews, go to http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Land/4252/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews