Dom Robinson reviews
Deep Blue Sea
Bigger. Smarter. Faster. Meaner.
Distributed by
- 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:
Akiva Goldsman, Tony Ludwig and Alan Riche
Screenplay:
Duncan Kennedy, Donna Powers and Wayne Powers
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 Sea
can be a nice place to go for a swim, but not in this film when it's populated by three
very angry and very clever sharks.
The highly-improbable storyline centres around a team of scientists working at an undersea
lab named Aquatica who genetically-modify sharks so that they produce a protein which will
cure Alzheimer's disease. Why? I forget now... Oh, yes, so that they can impress rich businessman
Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), make a mint and cure millions of potential
suffers. As a side-effect though, the sharks get brainier and develop a hatred of those who
captured 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, all
used to excellent effect. It also leaves you guessing as to who's going to get killed off next
and 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 does
and 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 J
is okay most of the time but doesn't quite cut it as the devout preacher man he plays. I didn't
go a bundle for Brit Saffron Burrows. She's one of these model-turned-actresses that
just 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 will
become clear.
Meet the star of the show...
Presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 ratio, the picture is colourful and well-defined, the
DVD encoding coping brillantly with the deep blue and red colours. There's no visible
artifacts 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 overall
soundtrack packs a punch right when it needs to. Certainly no complaints here in either of
these two categories.
Stellan thought of it as just an 'armless' piece of fun.
Extras :
Chapters :
To the untrained eye there appears to be just 33 chapters on this disc, which by any standards
would be perfectly acceptable. However, for no apparent reason there is three copies of the
film print on this disc and this is nothing to do with the extra languages or commentary track
as those are just alternate audio sources on the original film.
Both of the extra two versions (titles 7 and 8 for those who can select them directly) also
contain an anamorphic 2.35:1 print, but they each contain a massive 63 chapters and Title 7
has 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-selected
film print (Title 1) which has fewer chapters and Title 8 could have been replaced by a
fullscreen 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 subtitles
for English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Romanian and Bulgarian. The last three seem rather
odd 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 containing
stacks 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 actors
but only supplies the necessary details for Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jackson
and director Renny Harlin. Why none of the rest? The remaining extras are, for some
reason, in a separate section labelled "Decompression Chamber".
"When Sharks Attack!" is a fifteen-minute HBO Special, a standard featurette that
mixes in fullscreen clips of the film with comments and chat from the cast and crew. It's interesting to
watch once, but not something you'll go back to time and again and you should only watch it
AFTER you've seen the film. There are five Deleted Scenes spread out over eight minutes,
which, in similar fashion to
The Land Girls
, can be viewed
with or without director's commentary, such as two scenes that tells us that Janice and Jim
were originally an item - something completely omitted in the final version and would've suited
the film well, unlike the remaining deleted scenes. Each of these are presented in a
letterboxed 2.35:1 ratio and are subtitled. Subtitles also appear during
the two featurettes.
