The trailers and TV spots aren't hiding anything
about the movie. There's an expensive underwater research facility. While
exploring the depths of the ocean, a group of scientists and divers
accidentally free a beast that the ocean has naturally contained for millions
of years. That creature is a giant shark called a Megalodon. This group
stationed at the research facility who all fit into tidy character types then
fight the Meg before it can hurt too many people. It's a disaster movie with a
shark. That's about it.The story is constructed like it's built from a genre
checklist. If I got bored enough, I could probably rebuild 90% of this movie by
cutting together similar scenes from other disaster movies. And that's OK. For
what it is, this is an enjoyable movie.
The cast is designed with studio think-tank
precision. Jason Statham belongs to no country. He's that generic muscle-y
type that the Fast and Furious movies have been collecting for years who
worldwide audiences love. There are four east Asian characters (Bingbing Li,
Winston Chao, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Masi Oka) including the female lead (Li).
There's a comedian playing a slimy businessman (Rainn Wilson). Ruby Rose is
the sexy computer hacker. Page Kennedy is the African American character who
normally says what the audience is thinking. Cliff Curtis brings his ambiguous
ethnicity to the mix. A few others fill the "old man", "fat
guy", and/or "shark chum" quotient. And there you have a cast
that will make money in all the growing international markets. It's weirdly
regressive and progressive at the same time. It would be easy to be cynical
about how nakedly strategic it all is. Then again, the tokenism is almost
color-blind in this. Jason Statham could easily be played by The Rock, for
instance. There's a weird marriage between capitalism and diversity that
Hollywood has been slow to pick up on.
This is a fundamentally absurd movie. You know going
in that Jason Statham is going to punch a 60 foot shark at some point and that
the Meg is going to get within inches of a person before they are pulled into a
boat and rescued. Whenever a person gets a wide shot with them in the middle
smiling, they are about to get eaten. It's full of fake outs and questionable
physics. The shark tends to be as big or small as a scene needs. And, I don't
really understand "the bends" or pressure in general, but I feel like
people shouldn't be able to survive as much pressure change as they go through.
As I said before though, this just isn't the kind of
movie I care for. I'm not a fan of highlight deaths. The same thing has never
settled well with me in the Jurassic Park movies either. When a set
piece is designed around a character getting a notable death that is met with
laughter from the audience, that's always felt ghoulish to me. But then, I have
no issue with John Wick killing 10 people in highly choreographed fashion, so
this isn't a "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
situation. I just have a different tolerance for certain styles of senseless
violence.
I'm not sure that there's a version of this movie I
would love. Perhaps a little more subtlety in the quips or more interesting
quirks for the characters would help. Some more imagination or technical
complexity in the set pieces would've been nice. I'm not sure anyone in the
cast would've been my first choice (they were all plenty good for their roles
though). I don't even like Shark Week, so this was a tough sell to begin with.
Based on the audience in my theater, this will be exactly what a lot of people
want. It wasn't for me, but I knew that going in. I can promise you that
there's a giant shark doing giant damage and eating people and none of it is
played for camp.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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