Deep Blue Sea 1999 Film Starring Saffron Burrows
Intelligent Sharks Hunt Scientists in a Sinking Research Facility
Sep 20, 2009
Sharks don’t suffer from debilitating brain diseases as they age and by researching their brains, a group of scientists are hoping to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The sharks are about to bite back as their floating research facility starts to sink following a violent explosion.
Deep Blue Sea's Plot and Characters
Four young adults are hanging around onboard a yacht when they are suddenly attacked by a shark, and all four are knocked into the sea. The shark closes in but before it can chow down on one of the beautiful young people it is harpooned, twice.
At a top-secret research floating facility named Aquatica a group of scientists are attempting to harvest brain matter from sharks to cure Alzheimer’s disease. The team is made up of Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows), the lead scientist; Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgård); Dr. Janice Higgins (Jacqueline McKenzie); Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), a shark wrangler; Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport), an engineer; Sherman "Preacher" Dudley (LL Cool J), a religious, wise-cracking cook; and Brenda Kerns (Aida Turturro), the communications specialist. The money man funding their research is Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) and has come to check out the facility after news of the attack on the yacht reaches the papers.
Initially everything seems to be going well, and the experiment produces results. However, the sharks have been genetically engineered with larger brains so more of a protein can be harvested from them. As a side effect the sharks have become more intelligent. During an emergency situation one of the sharks is able to smash a huge window in the lab and starts to flood the facility.
The survivors race against time to make it back to the surface and figure out exactly what an intelligent shark thinks about.
Enjoyable Take on the Jaws Classic
In many man verses animal films the animals seem to be unnaturally clever and seem to recognise traps or who is trying to capture them. As a result it is difficult to do a film in which the animals are able to act with any intelligence because no one really believes that an animal can solve problems without being slowly trained over a period of time.
Deep Blue Sea takes the idea of having clever sharks and runs with it.
Typically many of the humans meet grisly ends in the jaws of the deadly fish, but, unlike several Jaws-type films Deep Blue Sea tips its hat to the Jaws films. The sharks are dispatched in the same ways as they were in the first three films. It also makes a change to see animals forming plans and the hapless humans running around whilst trying to escape the jaws of death.
Unfortunately Deep Blue Sea does make use of some unconvincing CGI effects. The sharks are a combination of lives sharks, animatronics, and CGI. It is obvious when the real fish or people have been replaced by computer generated copies that are ripped apart in various ways.
Director Renny Harlin has had successes with a number of films including Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger so he knows how to make a good action film. During a time when the controversy around genetic engineering is at a high Deep Blue Sea takes the idea to an extreme and creates a tense creature feature that is better than a thousand other Jaws imitations other there.
3/5
Good film unfortunately some of the CGI is incredibly obvious
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