Review of Deep Blue Sea (1999) by Diego T — 04 May 2014

"I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SHARKS IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING SECRET RESEARCH FACILITY!!!".

I never thought I'd say this, but here's a film that could benefit from a line like that. Deep Blue Sea is one of the worse films to be directed-sorry, perpetrated-by director Renny Harlin (whose other screen credits include The Legend of Hercules and the second-worst Die Hard movie), but of course, that's not saying much. In all honesty, I doubt that Martin Scorsese could have saved a film about a shark lab that, predictably, gets overrun by intelligent, ravenous sharks. But the difference is that he would have put some effort in, and contrary to popular belief, effort in movies does count for something. Suffice it to say that little to no effort was put into the making of Deep Blue Sea.

Deep Blue Sea stars... well... a lot of people. They're basically in rotation, with a new one being declared the main character every time the previous guy gets eaten by a shark. But this movie has Samuel L. Jackson playing a rich, badass muthafucka who visits his shark research lab just when everything starts going to shit. Sounds cool, right? Well, don't get too excited, because Jackson dies about halfway through the film. We're then left with the completely uninteresting team of Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, and LL Cool J to make it through the labyrinth of this top-secret facility alive, using only makeshift weapons, a rudimentary understanding of the laws of physics (or wait, should I attribute that one to the scriptwriters?), and completely asinine humor. Seriously, we're talking Michael Bay movie humor here, folks... it's not good. Also, what the fuck kind of a name is LL Cool J?

This movie is as dumb as it comes. I know I say that a lot, but this is literally the bottom of the barrel. The only way to make a movie like this any stupider is to throw in Liam Neeson's daughter getting abducted and some snakes on a plane. So firstly, the science of this movie is, at best, a tad askew. The researchers are literally injecting the sharks with DNA to make them faster, stronger, and smarter. Do these people WATCH movies like this? What did they expect? That's really asking for mother nature to come and smack you right in the face. Also, aside from illegally tampering with shark DNA in what I can only assume is the most dangerous way possible, what is the point of this experiment? Perhaps they want to breed the sharks and then release them on unsuspecting aquatic terrorist groups? It's never explained. This movie wants to be Jaws and Jurassic Park combined, but the difference is that Jurassic Park actually gave some reason for the shit that happened, while Jaws actually had some legitimate suspense. Neither of these are qualities shared by Deep Blue Sea.

What really irks me about dumb action movies like these are the human characters. Is there truly nothing original to be done these days? LL Cool J's character (ugh, what a stupid name) is a cook and a preacher. He spends most of the film praying to lawdy Jesus and acting as the comic relief, when you really wish he'd just get snapped up in the jaws of a mako so as to put an end to your misery. As for the other characters... well, have fun trying to tell them apart, because I sure as hell couldn't. Only when they die will you be able to figure out who's who-"Oh right, the main guy is the guy NOT being thrashed around in the mouth of a 20-foot shark right now." By the time the final scene has rolled around, all the characters you halfheartedly cared about have long since perished, and the annoying ones are still left alive. So really, if you have nothing better to do and you have your heart set on seeing this film... just turn it off after Samuel L. Jackson dies his glorious death.

Final Score for Deep Blue Sea: 2/10 stars. Look, I'm fine with dumb fun. It's even better when it knows it's dumb. But that's not something that a movie should take pride in. Deep Blue Sea is uncreative, unfunny, and just plain bad, and it knows it too. And the fact that it has still been pushed on audiences is a massive insult to people's intelligences. Can we do no better than this? I say we can, because I could probably swallow some Scrabble tiles, shit them out onto a piece of paper, and end up with a better script than the one in this travesty. Dumb fun doesn't even begin to cover this; you'd have to be legitimately retarded to enjoy a film as remarkably bad as this one. Even in the world of stupid z-movie rip-offs, Deep Blue Sea is as bad as it gets. Don't say I didn't warn you.