Deep Blue Sea was a film that I had heard some bad reviews and some good. I had never watched it and I can’t remember whether it came out at the cinema or not. All I knew was that it was about sharks and I had heard it was a bit like Jaws and being quite a big fan of jaws I was quite interested but never quite got round to renting it.
While on a shopping trip with my girlfriend she said she wanted to buy me something. Once I had been dragged around all the clothes shop and forced to stand outside the changing rooms with the other men on their sentences we popped into HMV. Now, I don’t like spending too much of her money (although she spends a lot of mine!) so decided to look through the current offer of £4.99 video’s. A few stood out to me but then I saw Deep Blue Sea and settled for it on video.
Once I had bought it my girlfriend then said she had seen it and said it was ‘alright’ and there was me who had just bought the thing and wondered if I should go back and change it for the other video I had seen, but then I would have to walk past the clothes shops again and that’s tempting more changing rooms so for the sake of my sanity decided to keep Deep Blue Sea.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings on onto the film!
The film is about A scientist who is searching for a cure to Alzheimer’s Disease. To find the cure she has to genetically enlarge sharks brains to get the cancer battling enzymes that are needed to cure Alzheimer’s Disease. However, there is a side effect, by enlarging the sharks brains, they also become more intelligent than they already are!
The Scientist, Susan (Saffron Burrows) needs some capital for the project so approaches Russel Franklin (Samuel L Jackson). He sets off to view the project for himself and ends up on the floating laboratory with the sharks. Russel looks impressed to start with until a freak storm starts up and this is where the fun begins.
Now, as you know, I don’t like to give to much of the story away, but in this case, to make the film sound half decent, I will have too!
The sharks are now mighty intelligent and don’t take kindly to being held in their pen. There is no way for them to get out as they are surrounded by a titanium fence. So, when one of the sharks has been put to sleep to be experimented on it gets its revenge and bites off the arm of one of the workers who then had to be air lifted to hospital. This doesn’t prove all that easy what with the freak storm and everything and the winch on the helicopter suddenly goes wrong and the injured bloke on the stretcher falls into the water. The helicopter tries to pull up to get him out of the water but it’s too late, a shark has hold of him and with it’s brute strength pulls the helicopter straight into the floating laboratory. The helicopter blows up and the laboratory is ruined. It’s the sharks perfect chance to get a bite to eat and also, get back into the ocean.
That’s the outline anyway! From here what you get is non stop action if a little bit cheesey in some parts. The sharks themselves don’t look all that realistic in the way they move but I do appreciate that it must have been pretty hard to make sharks that look and act realistic, especially with all the moves they have to carry out! The special effects are good, but are nothing really when you compare them to the likes of The Mummy Returns.
To cut it short, this film is like Jaw’s in a way, but Jaw’s was a lot more scary and this one lacked the horror part of the film with most of the film being pure tense action. It didn’t end the way I thought it would but the ending is very good.
I must admit, I was considering stopping the video and watching the TV in the first half an hour but I’m glad I didn’t as it really does start to get fun after the first half hour and from them on you won’t notice the tie flying past! It’s over 100 minutes but it really doesn’t fell like it at all.
I’d recommend this film. It isn’t the best film that I have seen and I wouldn’t consider it to be in any top 1 list that I might come up with in the future (ahhh, see, theres a hint to what one of my near future opinions may be about!) but for a good action flick where you don’t have to think very hard this is a very suspenseful film that’s well worth watching! 7/10!