Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Movie Info

Mmmmm….fresh scientist!

Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) hopes to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.  Using sharks, McAlester utilizes sharks’ natural resistance to disease and healing ability to test experimental substances.  When her backer Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) threatens to shut down the program, McAlester is forced to invite him to her facility Aquatica to see it himself.  A weekend visit leads to terror when the head scientist Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgård) has his arm eaten off and the rescue helicopter crashes into the base.  Now McAlester, Franklin, the head shark wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), the base cook Sherman “Preacher” Dudley (LL Cool J), Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport), and Janice Higgins (Jacqueline McKenzie) must escape the flooding base as the three super intelligent sharks seek to escape into the sea.

Fortunately, I had to undress to stop this shark!

Directed by Renny Harlin, Deep Blue Sea is a horror sci-fi film.  The movie received mixed reviews, but the movie was a financial success in the theater.

Deep Blue Sea is one of those kind of dirty pleasure films…it isn’t very good, but it is entertaining.  I love animal-attack movies and this has three great sharks hunting.  The movie sometimes is very horror based but often comes off as an unintentional comedy.

The story of Deep Blue Sea has some merit.  Sharks do have amazing medical ability and studies of them are often tied to cancer research since their genetic structure seems to protect them from many diseases…that is about it in the scientific “truth” to the movie.  The movie of course gets pretty dumb as the movie floods.  You have people constantly entering the water or getting knocked into the water of which they have a 50/50 chance of surviving.

Thanks for the weak end rap LL

The cast of the movie is pretty strong.  Thomas Jane is likable as the criminal turned professional shark wrangler, and the movie doesn’t go the way you expect it to go between Blake and McAlester who in a surprise twist ends up as sharkbait.  LL Cool J plays the cook who, despite giving lectures on “what black people wouldn’t do” to Samuel L. Jackson, almost ends up shark bait by trying to help his parrot.  The best moment of the movie comes from Samuel L. Jackson who gives his very Samuel L. Jackson speech and is promptly eaten by a shark.  It was pretty unexpected since at the time Samuel L. Jackson was at the peak of his popularity.

One of the best…deaths…ever!!!

Visually the movie actually doesn’t do horrible.  I prefer the animatronic sharks to the already dated computer animated sharks.  The movie actually looks worse when they add computer animated people to the computer animated sharks like the ending of the film which has Jane jump and ride the shark (who doesn’t do much to lose him).

Deep Blue Sea is bad fun.  The movie is cheesy but it is a “roller coaster” type film that does keep moving.  It pokes some fun at Jaws and other films, but still manages to be a bit memorable on its own…just maybe for the wrong reasons.