Director: Danny Lerner
Year: 2008
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Brought to Italy with news on his father, a man and his girlfriend learn the entire set-up was a ruse by local mafia-heads to assist them in locating priceless artifacts stored in local shark-infested waters and must brave the sharks to rescue her from their clutches.
Review:
With a lot to like about this one and a couple of minor flaws, this one comes off as a rather impressive entry. One of the best aspects is that the film manages to get a lot of enjoyment out of it's premise, since not only is the Venice location unique enough it offers up plenty of fun times with it. Due to the unique outline of the city and its actual location put to great use here, the set-ups in the streets add a different dimension to it all with a couple of awesome attacks that can only happen in that kind of setting. The attack on the drunken couple walking along the pier or the gondola massacre are scenes that are very hard to realistically pull-off without this kind of situation to be able to handle it, and are highlights of the film. For even more fun we have two extended foot-chases through the unique streets, both featuring lots of different action tactics that make them exciting and a lot of fun.
The main reason for this one, though, is the underwater action with the sharks. There's plenty of suspense, as the opening dive and a later one in the same area are just unnerving, chilling and tense being in the darkened, twisting, confusing and unknown tunnels helps, as do the murky waters and occasional bloody shark attack. We get plenty of action as well as several dives are quite interactive with the sharks that serve many nice functions along the way. With an impressive body count here not just from the sharks getting some nice brutal kills as well, these features make the film quite enjoyable. There wasn't a whole lot really wrong with this one.
One of the biggest issues with the film is that there's very little to be threatened about from these sharks. Despite displaying the false characteristic of constantly growling, the constant use of stock footage that has already been used in over twenty different films is something to get over. Mixed somewhat nicely into the action, the fact remains that all of these movies feature the same footage over and over so it gets repetitive fast. That it's also mixed somewhat ineffectively with the completely false-looking heads for the attacks is something else entirely. The other flaw to this one is that the film gets really low on shark action for it's middle half. It opens and closes with some good shark action, but it decides on the Mafia subplot for those scenes, and it takes away from the shark story. Beyond an occasional attack, there isn't much mentioned about them, which does deflate the film a tad. These, though, are the film's flaws.
Overview: ***.5/5
A fun and enjoyably cheesy killer shark film that manages to include some likable elements featured here, the few minor flaws on display just do enough to hold it down from how much better it could've been. Fans of this type of SyFy Channel killer shark films or just cheesy creature features in general will have a lot to like here while most other fans should heed caution with this one.
Comments
Post a Comment