Deep Blue Sea

• Cert:
• Cat.no: D 017242
• Running time: 101 minutes
• Year: 1999
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 33 and 63 (!)
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English (and hearing impaired), Arabic, Romanian, Bulgarian
• Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
• 16:9-enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, “When Sharks Attack!” (HBO Special), Audio Commentary,Deleted Scenes (plus commentary), Featurette: The Sharks of the Deep Blue Sea,Stills Gallery, Cast and crew, DVD-ROM content

Director:

(The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cutthroat Island, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea, Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Maker, Prison)

Producers:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Dr. Susan McAlester: Saffron Burrows (Celebrity, Circle of Friends, Deep Blue Sea, In the Name of the Father, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, The Matchmaker, Nevada, One Night Stand, Wing Commander, TV: Cold Lazarus)
Carter Blake: Thomas Jane (Boogie Nights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Crow: City of Angels, Deep Blue Sea, Face/Off, The Last Time I Committed Suicide, Molly, The Thin Red Line)
Sherman “Preacher” Dudley: LL Cool J (Deep Blue Sea, The Hard Way)
Janice Higgins: Jacqueline McKenzie (Angel Baby, Deep Blue Sea, Romper Stomper, TV: Stark)
Tom Scoggins: Michael Rappaport (Beautiful Girls, Cop Land, Deep Blue Sea, Higher Learning, Metro, Mighty Aphrodite, The Naked Man, The Pallbearer, Rescuers 3, Some Girl, True Romance)
Jim Whitlock: Stellan Skarsgård (Amistad, Breaking The Waves, Deep Blue Sea, Good Will Hunting, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Saviour, Stalingrad, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
Russell Franklin: Samuel L. Jackson (187, Amos and Andrew, Deep Blue Sea, Die Hard With a Vengeance, Eve’s Bayou, The Great White Hype, Jackie Brown, Jungle Fever, Jurassic Park, Kiss of Death, The Negotiator, Pulp Fiction, Sphere,A Time To Kill)

Deep Blue Seacan be a nice place to go for a swim, but not in this film when it’s populated by threevery angry and very clever sharks.

The highly-improbable storyline centres around a team of scientists working at an undersealab named Aquatica who genetically-modify sharks so that they produce a protein which willcure Alzheimer’s disease. Why? I forget now… Oh, yes, so that they can impress rich businessmanRussell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), make a mint and cure millions of potentialsuffers. As a side-effect though, the sharks get brainier and develop a hatred of those whocaptured them.

What follows is a great action update on Jaws as each member of the cast, either alone or in a group,get into sticky situations at the hands of the dastardly sharks. There’s plenty of screaming,plenty of blood flowing and typical of a Renny Harlin film, plenty of explosions, allused to excellent effect. It also leaves you guessing as to who’s going to get killed off nextand it’s occasionally surprising.

Of the cast, Thomas Jane cuts a good action hero as Carter, Samuel L. Jackson,while always good to see him onscreen, continues to play the same character he always doesand there’s something about Jacqueline McKenzie, as Janice, that makes her as gorgeous as ever.Maybe it’s that wet-suit 🙂

Michael Rappaport always seems to get the wimpish type of character, LL Cool Jis okay most of the time but doesn’t quite cut it as the devout preacher man he plays. I didn’tgo a bundle for Brit Saffron Burrows. She’s one of these model-turned-actresses thatjust doesn’t seem to be able to act, making her our answer to Rene Russo. Finally,Stellan Skarsgård is a good actor, but doesn’t get much to do here for reasons that willbecome clear.

Meet the star of the show…

Presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 ratio, the picture is colourful and well-defined, theDVD encoding coping brillantly with the deep blue and red colours. There’s no visibleartifacts either and the average bitrate is a fine 6.61Mb/s, occasionally peaking above 8Mb/s.

The sound is also first-rate. Dialogue is clear, the music draws you in and the overallsoundtrack packs a punch right when it needs to. Certainly no complaints here in either ofthese two categories.

Stellan thought of it as just an ‘armless’ piece of fun.

Both of the extra two versions (titles 7 and 8 for those who can select them directly) alsocontain an anamorphic 2.35:1 print, but they each contain a massive 63 chapters and Title 7has Dolby Digital sound and the commentary track available, but Title 8 is completely silent!

I’ve no idea why Warner chose to do this, as Title 7 could have replaced the originally-selectedfilm print (Title 1) which has fewer chapters and Title 8 could have been replaced by afullscreen version to appease the black-bar haters 🙂

Languages & Subtitles :English is the only language on the disc – in Dolby Digital 5.1 – and there are subtitlesfor English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Romanian and Bulgarian. The last three seem ratherodd choices over the usual European langauges. And there’s more… :Thankfully, for a full-priced day-and-date title from Warner, we have a disc containingstacks of extras and all the ones from the Region 1 DVD.

First off is Cast and Crew which is a filmography that lists all the principal actorsbut only supplies the necessary details for Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jacksonand director Renny Harlin. Why none of the rest? The remaining extras are, for somereason, in a separate section labelled “Decompression Chamber”.