Deep Water Review – plane crash survivors play roulette with biting fish | Video

MeIf done right, a disaster film can produce a movie like no other, capturing emotions, suspense and schadenfreude in simple episodes. Deep Water, in which an American plane full of small-time movie stars crashes into shark-infested waters, knows exactly what it’s doing despite looking at several of its predecessors.

At first, the painting pays homage to, or steals, Jaws and his images of small swimmers on the surface and a large toothed shark rising from the depths. Later, an elderly woman jokingly compares him to Shelley Winters, the Oscar-winning actress best remembered for swimming for her life in the ill-fated The Poseidon Adventure. More than anything, the film makes viewers wish and pray that the average US guy (Angus Sampson, a smoker) becomes shark chum before it’s too late.

You’ll have to watch to find out if they do, but the film plays a good game of roulette, randomly killing good and bad people alike. For example, there are couples (and potential couples) we need to establish, including e-sport teammates (Li Wenhan and Zhao Simei), a pilot (Nashi) and a nice guy (Richard Crouchley) treading water, but only one team makes it to life. What remains to be seen is the fate of the game’s pilots Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley, whose chances of survival depend on the cinematic laws of the jungle.

Director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight) was once a huge thing in movies but then had a spectacular fall from grace (courtesy of Cutthroat Island); he actually does a disturbing job here. Admittedly, Harlin fails to negotiate from the seven famous artists mentioned who have no fiction, but he always has a real gift for sequence.

The worst of the plane wreckage is complicated, starting with people drowning in sinkholes and ending with seawater and 200 or so more. Plus, as the creator of Deep Blue Sea, Harlin also knows how to fight a fake shark. Wisely, we don’t see much of them, mostly just gray fins poking out of the water ominously or bright shapes rising from the bottom, but they are very biting beasts.