Title: Deep Blue Sea
Director: Renny Harlin
Starring: Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J, Michael Rapaport,
Stellan Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson
Duration: 105 minutes
Certificate: 15
Zoologist / Biologist Dr Susan McAlester is working on genetically enlarging the brains of sharks to harvest tissue for medicine in an off-shore lab named Aquatica. Didn’t she realise that if she increased the brain capacity of the sharks that they might become more intelligent and possibly dangerous and even self-aware? Apparently not! Good thing too or we wouldn’t have a fun film to watch about super-intelligent killer sharks hungry for scientist blood would we? These clever sharks are now looking for a way out of the testing lab and the confines of their holding cages into the deep blue sea. Can’t blame them really can you?
The sharks are a breed of Mako that is bigger, stronger, smarter, faster and more aggressive than ever seen before. So what we get is a full on fight between sharks and humans to find out who really is the ultimate predator. Of course some of the humans will survive won’t they? Well maybe, just maybe.
There is a tropical storm and some of the lab is damaged and the sharks are free. Now the race is on for the scientists to get the hell out of there before they drown or end up being munched on by a super shark.
Deep Blue Sea, doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s a fun, silly, scary, stalk-and-slash style film where you know pretty much everyone is going to get eaten at some point in an increasingly grisly fashion. It’s also got a killer cast of cool actors including Thomas Jane, LL Cool J, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s loads of fun and it looks great on blu-ray. The image is clear and the colours are bright. A lot of the action happens in the dark or in water so it’s great that it still manages to look so good. It’s clearly a decent leap in quality from earlier incarnations of the film that I’ve seen on TV, although I never saw it on DVD so it’s not possible for me to properly compare it to that source material.
There are also some great genre in-jokes, if you’re watching carefully enough, including the fact that the car license plate pulled from the shark's teeth by Thomas Jane in the opening scenes is the same license plate that was found inside the tiger shark in Jaws. Whilst director Renny Harlin also has a cameo appearance in the film as one of the employees that are leaving the facility for their weekend break also in the opening scenes.
It’s the perfect sort of film if you like killer sharks and I think we all do don’t we? It’s Friday night popcorn fun in a claustrophobic underwater lab with killer sharks on the loose – think Alien 3, only better!
