Deep Blue Sea (1999)

The Plot of Deep Blue Sea: In a former German U-Boat refurbishment facility, somewhere in a warm, ocean a group of scientists are developing a serum for combatting Altseimers. To do this they have corralled Mako sharks and enlarged their brains, accidentally making them smarter and bigger. A weekend leave roster results in minimum manning, the remaining crew including the chief scientist Susan McCallister and an executive Russell Franklin. While an operation on a shark is taking place the creature wakes up and bikes one of the scientist’s arms off, so a helicopter is called, but during his recover their winch fails and his stretcher is submerged. A shark pulls the helicopter into the structure, removing the control room.  Thereafter the remaining people are chased around the structure, sometimes underwater and usually trying to make it to the surface, as they are gradually picked off by the smart sharks.

The Content of Deep Blue Sea: No nudity but the nerdy chief scientist is surprisingly hot when she gets down to her underwear. Some explosions, particularly when the helicopter crashes. A  lot of looking at maps and dashing about in the structure, some of the time with sharks chasing the survivors down partially filled corridors. Big scene as they try to climb a very deep shaft with water gradually filling it and sharks in the water. Some of the actors spend a lot of time under water, alarmingly. Light relief on the part of Preacher the cook and his parrot, until the parrot is eaten. Gradually most of the cast are overcome by the sharks.

A View of Deep Blue Sea: This is wild stuff and makes no sense whatever, so serious suspension of disbelief is essential. I could never make much sense of the marine structure which contains the sharks and, incidentally, the people. However, the death of Samuel L. Jackson’s character has made into several lists of “great movie deaths”, and comes as a surprise. The film received mixed reviews one of the critics listing it with several other films – also on my list of favourites. So despite its problems if you like a shark film give it a go.

Samuel L. Jackson has appeared in a number of monster films. In this one they had originally intended that he be the chef, but “his people” deemed that this was inappropriate for him so they wrote him something else. He also appeared in other monster films including Jurassic Park, Kong: Skull Island and Snakes on a Plane.