Deep Blue Sea *** (1999, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L Jackson, Stellan Skarsgård) – Classic Movie Review 1456

Director Renny Harlin’s 1999 horror film Deep Blue Sea isn’t exactly a high-quality monster movie but it is thoroughly enjoyable none the less.

Main star Saffron Burrows looks fit as the anti-heroine Dr Susan McAlester, but gives the most extraordinarily fake and hollow performance as a rotten scientist aboard the isolated floating laboratory Aquatica, whose team of researchers are searching for a cure to Alzheimer’s disease and have been genetically modifying the DNA of male sharks and turning them into brainy monster killers.

Now a tropical storm is battering the sinking Aquatica research facility and the skeleton weekend crew finds themselves stalked by the new generation sharks as bait for a trio of intelligent sharks.

LL Cool J, Samuel L Jackson, Thomas Jane, Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie and Aida Turturro also star in Harlin’s tacky but entertaining Jaws-style chiller, with suitably rotten trick work, obviously either plastic models (like in Jaws) or all too evident computer-generated effects.

There are some surprises among the dead cast members, especially early on, and it is packed with many nail-biting moments right up to the exciting climax. Thomas Jane makes a fine hero as Carter Blake.

Deep Blue Sea did well to gross $73,648,142 in the US and more than $160 million worldwide. This old-fashioned B-movie with an A-movie budget ($60,000,000) is good, scary fun.

The ending was changed after a test screening one month before the film’s opening, in which members of the audience booed.

Also in the cast are Cristos, Daniel Rey, Valente Rodriguez, Brent Roam, Dan Thiel, Tajsha Thomas, Ronny Cox and Renny Harlin.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1456

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