July 29–August 5, 1999

movie shorts

Deep Blue Sea

Three supersmart sharks (all females, naturally) decide to exterminate the humans whose experiments have produced their genetically mutated brilliance. As self-parodic monster-thrillers go, Renny Harlin's gonzo waterfest has got a lot going for it: you got your plot and character bits from Jaws, whichever Alien, Jurassic Park, just about any slasher film, and Waterworld (strictly speaking, lacking monsters and thrills, but by all appearances, providing the above-water set here). The story goes like so: a driven bitch of a scientist (Saffron Burrows), with personal reasons for her radical Alzheimer’s research, breaks some rules, thus endangering her more or less good-hearted fellow scientists (Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, and Stellan Skarsgaard), not to mention the shark wrangler (Boogie Nights' s drug fiend Thomas Jane), corporate financier they're hoping to impress (Sphere alum Samuel L. Jackson, who pays dearly for his can't-we-all-get-along speechifying), and a resourceful cook played by LL Cool J, whose comments on "brothers’" usual fates in such fare are obvious but enormously crowd-pleasing. The movie doesn't pretend to be anything but what it is, namely, an expensively outfitted line-up of sharkbait candidates waiting their turns. Caring about the cliche situations or the characters' flatness is way beside the point.

—Cindy Fuchs