Bristol Science Film Festival: Deep Blue Sea

Last year, they tore apart The Core. This year, it’s the turn of Renny Harlin‘s daft yet enjoyable 1999 mutant shark sci-fi action film to get the Bristol Science Film Festival treatment. Does any of the film’s science make any sense? And does this actually matter? Rival panelists make their cases during this special screening.

The film? It’s a shark attack movie that opens with some eminently edible US teens being menaced by a dentally privileged sea-dwelling predator. Rather than attempting to head off obvious comparisons with Spielberg’s effortlessly superior Jaws, Renny (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and, alas, Cutthroat Island) Harlin positively encourages them, notably in a big, strangely familiar speech by Samuel L. Jackson with a payoff that’s well worth the wait.

Deep Blue Sea is very silly indeed. But it craves forgiveness by revelling in its absurdity, delivering all the shocks and entertainment you could possibly want along the way. Face it: the best you can hope for from a film like this is that you won’t be able to predict who’s next to be gobbled up and when it’s going to happen. On this count, Deep Blue Sea merits the full five stars. Unfortunately, there’s also some plot to fill in the gaps between snacks. Saffron Burrows, in one of the great unconvincing performances of all time, is a posh English vivisectionist bitch who experiments on living shark noggins in the hope of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s. (Look, I told you to check your brain at the popcorn stand.) For reasons of plot chivvyment, her wealthy backer has given her just 48 hours to get some results and sent along Samuel L Jackson to oversee the boffinry at her conveniently isolated deep-sea research facility filled with disposable extras. Outside, a CGI storm begins to brew.

“All right people, these sharks are thinking!” exclaims Jackson in one of the film’s many hilarious lines. Actually, Sam, the sharks are the only ones doing the thinking down here as the cast proceed to imperil themselves unnecessarily by running around in water-filled corridors pursued by deadly killing machines that are even more pissed off than usual because Ms. Burrows has made their brains swell up. Imagine the pitch: “It’s Aliens. Underwater! With sharks!” Thomas Jane gives good macho as the shark wrangler, LL Cool J seems to have taken his entire performance from Forest Whitaker in Species, and Sam Jackson just looks faintly amused, as well he might. Although a few of the supposedly state-of-the-art digital shark effects look a bit ropy, Harlin handles the action expertly, delivering some magnificent gore (look out for the legs that continue to twitch after being severed) and one of modern cinema’s most breathtakingly feeble plot contrivances requiring a female star to strip down to her bra and panties.

Go here for tickets.