Review of Deep Blue Sea

Video

Director Renny Harlin repeatedly spouts during the various featurettes that he challenges anyone to pick out the CGI sharks from the animatronic versions. They are good, but they aren`t that good. Amazingly, whereas in Jurassic Park the CGI looked far better than the real puppets, Deep Blue Sea is quite the reverse. The animatronic sharks are just incredibly powerful and realistic, especially the way they swim.

Distance shots of the floating rig look very iffy, reminding me a little of the bow wave in Titanic, scale just isn`t quite there. But these are minor grumbles, there is lots of eye candy thrown in for the effects nuts.

The transfer is very good, suffering from little posturisation in the graduated blue underwater scenes. Details are nice and sharp, colour is rich, explosions look great, just what the DVD doctor ordered. One minor grumble, the layer change is in a bit of an awkward place.

Audio

The musical score isn`t exactly memorable, never going to be a classic ranking alongside the likes of Aliens and Star Wars. This is not as good as Armageddon, who composer Trevor Rabin also put pen to paper for. LL Cool J has been brought in as musical advisor, a blatant attempt to give the soundtrack some street cred no doubt.

Sound effects are great, all the stereotypical echoes, creaking, drips and splashes will wonder all around anyone`s Dolby Digital setup, stopping often at the subwoofer for good measure.

Features

The layout of extras on this disc is very reminiscent of The Matrix, why they make you wander one further screen into the menus just to reach the additional features is beyond me but there you go.

You do get some good stuff though, the two featurettes are kind of interesting when viewed just once. There are a lot of stills, mainly of Saffron Burrows, and the trailer is actually anamorphic for a change.

The deleted scenes however are insanely blocky, maybe this is down to the directors fear someone might actually re-edit them back into the movie and make it a better film.

Conclusion

The scariest thing about Deep Blue Sea is the fact three script writers worked on the screenplay and this was the best they could come up with. The dialogue is abysmal, and no character ever comes across as worth saving. Your only chance to see these people as anything other than shark fodder, and admittedly it is quite a slim chance, sits neatly in the deleted scenes section. Cut, I believe, because it got in the way of the action.

Okay, admittedly there was one tiny part that made me jump, when one character (won`t spoil it by saying who) gets gobbled by a shark. That was the only surprise, but to be honest I saw it in his face long before, he wanted out of this dreadful movie ASAP.

Bottom line then, this is a classless, talentless, mindnumbing action movie very much like every other Renny Harlin effort. If you want good acting, witty script and things swimming around that actually scare you then wait for Jaws. But if you liked Con Air, you`ll probably love it.