They say that the road to hell is paved with good
intentions: "Deep Blue Sea" involves a story line that proves
the point. Renny Harlin's film focuses on an experiment
conducted at a marine biology base in Baja California three
miles from the Mexican town of Santa Rosita. A team of
scientists led by the brilliant Dr. Jim Whitlock (Stellan
Skarsgard) seeks a cure for Alzheimer's disease, with Susan
McAlester (Saffron Burrows), a particularly idealistic woman,
thrilled to part in shark research that could finish off the dread
degenerative disease. But in doing so, McAlester necessarily
creates a Frankenstein monster intent on destroying the very
people who are messing with its life--getting revenge indeed,
as this big fish can actually think and plan on a fairly high
level. Three sharks have been genetically altered to make
them smart. The biologists' aim is to draw fluid from their
brains of these 8,000-pound killing machines that could be
synthesized into a drug. The trouble is that if any of these
sharks should get loose--a distinct possibility given their
dolphin-like brainpower--they could destroy first their creators
and then untold numbers of others they'd happen upon in the
deep blue sea. This is a Frankenstein story indeed.
But Renny Harlin, who oversees this shark-o-rama is no
Whale and does not come close to replicating the terror
created in "Jaws" by Steven Spielberg--a classic that
fortunately went light on the special effects. Nor are writers
Duncan Kennedy, Wayne Powers and Donna Powers, in a
class with Mary Shelley. With a lame script (think of the cry
of one victim, Janet Winters, who falls into the water: Save
me! I don't want to die!") and a direction that employs not a
smidgen of originality, what do you have left? Just
special effects: but in that area, the oversized suchi created
by CGI and animatronic technology look no more authentic
that the fish that Spielberg worked with in 1975. The
obligatory explosions and torrents of water rushing into the
laboratory threatening to drown everyone who's not already
eaten are as generic as the shark is genetic.
The story opens on Russell Franklin, who heads a major
pharmaceutical company about to pull the plug on its $200
million investment in Alzheimer's research. He is talked into
giving the research team forty-eight more hours to convince
him of their achievements and is escorted to the Baja
California site of the experimentation where he is introduced
to the "brilliant" Dr. Jim Whitlock. "If he's so brilliant," asserts
Franklin, "Why is pissing into the wind?" (Indeed the doctor is
doing just that on top of the deck. Why? Probably to get a
laugh out of audience members who haven't seen that silly
gesture a dozen times this year.) Susan impresses Franklin
by dropping 2 cc. of shark fluid into a bottled brain, noting
how the cells are regenerating successfully, but just as he's
about to report back to his company to authorize the
investment, all hell breaks loose in Baja. If this is not your
first summer horror movie, you know the rest.
The cast wastes the extraordinary talent of Stellan
Skarsgard in what's easily his silliest role (Skarsgard is
perhaps most familiar to an American audience from his
appearance in "Ronin" but the Swedish actor's great role
teamed him with the great Emily Watson in Lars von Trier's
"Breaking the Waves"). Samuel L. Jackson looks
appropriately professorial with goatee and glasses, and while
his role is likewise shallow, he performs a great service for
the pharmaceutical industry, which constantly needs to justify
the outlandish prices that Americans pay for prescription
drugs. LL Cool J is the audience sentimental favorite as
Dudley, a parrot-loving cook on the lab site, who wonders
why the "brothers" don't leave dangerous assignments to "the
white folks." This is a summer movie, granted, but it's hot
out there: we deserve better.
Hey: If these genetically-altered sharks are do darn smart, what
are they doing in this film?
Copyright © 2000 Harvey Karten
out of 4
