Deep Blue Sea

Director: Renny Harlin
Actors: Ha!

While plagiarizing researching a movie database for tidbits on this film (ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha...) I came across some interesting factoids on it's director Renny Harlin. He also directed The Long Kiss Goodnight, Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2. Pay attention Movie Clubbers. Knowing Renny has such talent could be provide us vast resources for future Movie Club selections. His talents extend beyond mere directing as well. He acted in Deep Blue Sea, playing the highly-invisible character billed in the credits as, "Worker". And he wrote and/or directed a trio of Academy Award-winning-one-word-title films: Prison, Driven and Speechless. Oh boy, I'm getting goose bumps. (Not).

Cheap Blue Sea, as we've come to know this film, is about a group of scientists on an isolated and partially submerged ocean-based facility. They are using shark brain juice in tests to develop a cure for Alzheimer's Disease. They need extra brain juice, so they make the shark brains bigger to increase production. This makes the sharks smarter. (Whatever...) Thus the movie's tag line: How fast can you swim?

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The sharks become so smart that they recognize that fences above water are made of plain steel, while those below water are made of Fizer Fence (a new investigational shark proof alloy). When one of the "smarks" (smart shark) is herded into the lab, drugged and removed from the water, it reacts by eating the arm of a scientist. The other scientists fail to recognize that more sedation or additional restraints might be critical to this situation. But it doesn't matter because the smark lays back coolly and lets them put a needle in it's brain and suck out the juice without fussing. But my favorite scene is when the smark gets the terrified cook out of his oven/hiding place by using it's opposable thumbs (er, ah, opposable fins?) to turn the knob and then it sets the water on fire by borrowing someone's Zippo.

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The smarks continue eating the actors and navigating their way flawlessly, and unmolested through the research facility. When one of the survivors is left trapped in a flooded room, she saves herself and even the most bored male viewers by fending off a smark wearing only her underwear (the actress is in her underwear, not the smark). Finally Samuel L. Jackson reads his contract and discovers he only has to say a dozen cheesy lines before he too dies, hoping that no one ever connects him with this movie. Now there are only 3 people left and I lost count of the smarks. By this time the Movie Club membership was on it's third dessert, sacrificing missed moments of the movie to serve up anything located in the kitchen, preferring heartburn to the movie. No one cared how it ended. And I don't think that has changed.

By the way, the sharks were real.

E.W.

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