Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Renny Harlin
Written by: Duncan Kennedy, Wayne Powers & Donna Powers
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Stellan Skarsgard, LL Cool J, Michael Rapaport
Produced by: Akiva Goldsman, Robert Kosberg, Tony Ludwig, Alan Riche

The Nutshell

Bred for the purpose of helping Alzheimer's research, three ultra-intelligent sharks wreak havoc on their human captors.

The Review

    Jaws was the first giant-killer-animal-of-some-sort film to be a huge success, and has gone down in cinematic history as a fright classic. It is no surprise then that giant-killer-animal-of-some-sort films keep coming out. The current Steve Miner/David E. Kelley collaboration Lake Placid will be entering its third weekend when Deep Blue Sea opens this Friday. While none of the giant animal films since Jaws have equalled it for terror (except Alien but then a giant alien is a whole different genre of film), many are at least a fun summer distraction. Lake Placid is, and so is Deep Blue Sea.

    The plot is typically silly. A team of researchers have increased the brain mass of two sharks (and the two have spawned a third with an equally big brain) for the purpose of finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The hope is that a protein taken from their big brains will re-activate the dead brain cells in humans afflicted with the disease. Unfortunately, the increase in brain mass has naturally made the sharks smart. Ultra smart. Thus it is no surprise that these killers wind up kicking some human butt, allowing director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) to blow lots of things up, something he is always eager to do in his films. While this film could have attempted to scare its audience, Harlin and his team of writers wisely choose to take a lighter road, creating a fun-filled special effects ride that makes audiences laugh (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). The film's tone was perfectly summed up for me by an audience member. At one point, Samuel L. Jackson's character, Russell Franklin, asks his fellow ocean-mates "What does a 7,000 pound killing machine with no natural predators think about?" A man from the balcony yelled out "Anything it wants!!" You could almost hear the rimshot, but that gentleman truly understood what he was watching.

    The characters are a generic mix of stock characters. You've got the athletic guy (Thomas Jane), the love interest (Burrows), the wise-cracking sidekick (Rapaport doing the only character he knows) and Stellan Skarsgard looking horribly out of place as the quirky scientist. They all say typical Hollywood-film things like "what was that?" or "I don't want to die!" and make Hollywood-film decisions (at one point a giant underwater window is rapidly cracking apart, yet the characters, all of whom work underwater and know perfectly well that tons of water are about to crush them, don't move. they stand there and wait until it actually ruptures before moving). The dialogue is at times quite funny, as LL Cool J (the chef) records himself describing the perfect omelette to his family as a legacy ("amateurs often add milk for density, but this is a mistake!"),  and Samuel L. Jackson gives a speech equally as powerful as his famous Ezekiel 25:17 speech from Pulp Fiction, with unexpected, but hilarious results.

    The sharks are at times believable, but more often than not, look quite fake. They flow through the water in a too-fluid way that is instantly recognizable to anyone who saw last year's Anaconda. Harlin blows everything up piece by piece, ignoring that little thing called subtlety, but he has a much more controlled direction than his fellow "BIG-movie" director Joel Schumacher. Many people will likely find Deep Blue Sea to be stupid, which it is. But most people who go to see this film knowing that they won't be seeing anything Oscar-worthy should find it to be a fun way to kill two hours.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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