# Deep Blue Sea (1999)

### reviewed by
Gary Jones

    Deep Blue Sea  (5/10)

Deep Blue Sea is a big budget 'B'-movie in which scientists in an undersea medical research laboratory produce super-smart sharks and pay the price as the fiendish fish decide to get their own back on the pesky interfering boffins. (As is usual in Hollywood movies, scientists are portrayed as brilliant but misguided, and blinded by ambition to the consequences of their actions.)

Director Renny Harlin is a competent action film helmsman, but seems not to care too much about the quality of the script he is working with or the performances of his actors - his Die Hard 2 was a poor sequel mainly because its script didn't come close to matching the wit and detail of character of the original film. In Deep Blue Sea, Harlin seems to have abandoned any notion of believable plot or convincing characters. The dialogue piles cliche on cliche ("give me 48 hours"... "it's your call") and much of the plot is idiotic. Samuel L. Jackson plays the financial backer visiting the laboratory to check up on his investment. Most of the time he looks as if he has just wandered onto the set, bewildered about how he's ended up appearing in this movie. The rest of the cast is generally pretty lame, although Michael Rapaport is fine as an irritable and jumpy engineer. The most memorable portrayal, though, comes from Saffron Burrows, who as the lab's unfeasibly attractive chief scientist gives what must be one of the worst leading performances of the year. Given the lines she has to deliver, and the credibility-stretching things she has to do, such as stripping off to her microscopic underwear in order to avoid an electric shock, a good performance was probably unimaginable.

If Deep Blue Sea were just that little bit worse, it could be taken as a parody, but unfortunately it's not quite that bad. The defence that it's all just a bit of fluff - a bit of lightweight hokum - is no excuse for laziness. In an apparent attempt to take the wind out of the sails of criticisms that this is just a Jaws rip-off, the film-makers have included some clear references to the mother-of-all fish movies, including a similar opening sequence and Samuel L. Jackson's spoof of Quint's USS Indianapolis speech. But such winking at the audience doesn't really excuse the film's shortcomings.

The one interesting feature of the film, and the thing which nearly saves it, is the way monster-movie conventions of who gets killed, and when, are turned on their head. After a few characters have been turned to fish food in some quite startling ways, we really don't know who's going to get ripped to shreds next. The sharks themselves are nicely done - if sometimes a little too obviously CGI'd - and the suspense and action sequences in the sunken laboratory are handled well, as we'd expect, but the good things about the film can't disguise its essential tackiness. Deep Blue Sea tries for a similar feel to the year's other lightweight Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy, but whereas The Mummy seems to be the work of smart people having some whimsical fun, Deep Blue Sea appears to have been produced by people too dumb or too lazy to do any better. -- Gary Jones Homepage: www.bohr.demon.co.uk PGP public key available from servers (DH/DSS key ID: 0x11EAE903)

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