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This adventure turns out to be all wet
"Deep Blue Sea"

Reviewed by Carlos deVillalvilla

Several years ago, Hollywood churned out three movies in a row - "Deep Star Six," "Leviathan" and "The Abyss" - that all featured a claustrophobic monster hunt in a cramped undersea station environment.

Of those, only "The Abyss" had any merit, as James Cameron, pre-"Titanic," got to work out his aquatic fixation.

Now, here it is one year before the Millennium, and you'd think Hollywood woulda learned. Now here is a movie that crams in as many cliches as the producers thought they could fit into a single movie; mad scientests messing with Mother Nature, Mother Nature turning bitchy on the mad scientest, taciturn brooding hero with a checkered past, isolation by a big ol' storm, a Terrible Secret, killer sharks ripping people into li'l hunks o' gore and monsters WAY smarter than the trapped station personnel; all this and comic relief, too.

Now, I'll watch Samuel L. Jackson in a bad movie any day of the week, and his presence here earns the movie the stars it gets.

Jackson is a wealthy man with compassion and a conscience; in short, the kind of guy who doesn't really exist in real life.

Most of the other actors here really, um, tank.

LL Cool JLL Cool J, who plays a devout chef, utters the best line of the movie when things look bleak and it looks like the sharks are about to break into the humans' temporary sanctuary: "I'm (doomed). Brothers always get eaten in situations like this."

The rapper-turned-actor is actually pretty likable despite a poorly-written character.

Director Reny Harlin hasn't directed a watchable movie .... errrr, ever*, and this one doesn't look to be his first.

Some of the shark effects are nifty, but for the most part, LOOK fake. Too much CGI ruins the soup, folks.



In the theater or on video?
Some of the effects are best seen on a big screen. Close call - I'd have to go the rent-a-video route on this one; for the most part, the movie takes place in a claustraphobic environment that won't suffer on the smaller screen.
DVD at Amazon.com
VHS at Amazon.com

* Dr Gone must demur: Reny Harlin directed "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight," which are both terrific and enjoyable action films.

See other information about "Deep Blue Sea" at Internet Movie Data Base.