Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Isn't Samuel L. Jackson just the greatest presence on the silver screen?

Now that I have that out of the way, let me tell you about Deep Blue Sea, and with all due respect to Mr. Jackson.

Deep Blue Sea resembles a comic book that a Junior High School student might write between classes. The story is like this: A scientist is trying to convince her financial contributor to keep funding a project that is aimed at helping those with Alzheimer's. To further convince him to keep his support coming, she takes him to the floating science station where the research is performed. The research is centered around the fact that the protiens in a shark's brain stimulates regeneration in damaged human brain cells. What she has not told the investor is that she has been giving the sharks hormones so that their brains will actually increase in size and capacity, therefore producing more protiens. However, by increasing the sharks' brains, she is also increasing their intelligence, because as we all know, bigger brain means smarter creature, right? Well, these smart sharks start fighting back and the humans aboard the research vessel find themselves being toyed with and picked off one by one.

The purpose of a movie is to entertain, to draw the audience in and make a believable reality in which we can lose ourselves for the duration of the film. This movie does not do any of that at all. The story is hokey, and nearly plagiaristic. The dialog is dumb and unmoving. And then there's the sharks. Well, how can I say this? The sharks are not even remotely realistic. While I could not attempt to make better versions myself on my home computer, I am not the film maker. It was embarrassing to watch the sharks. They resembled the sharks in the Cinnaburst commercial ("Flavor crystals? Flavor crystals?") and in the Hostess commercial ("Hey! Where's the cream filling?"), but were no more realistic than that. The best this film did was to throw in a couple of "Gotcha!" scenes where they made you jump. Other than that, this movie was about as scary as a slideshow of my grandparents' trip to Sea World, and just as gripping.

Rating:

Trivia:

The three sharks in the film die, in order, the same way the sharks die in Jaws, Jaws II, and Jaws 3-D (blown up, electrocuted, blown up).

Samuel L. Jackson also starred in another Renny Harlin film, Long Kiss Goodnight, which also starred Renny's then-wife Geena Davis.

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