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Deep Water is a film that effectively fills the movie screen from left to right and top to bottom. Plus, it has sound.
Throw in an ensemble cast of Molly Belle Wright, Angus Sampson, Lucy Barrett, Rose Zhao, Lakota Johnson, Elijah Tamati, Rarmian Newton, Madeleine West, Mark Hadlow, Kelly Gale, Kate Fitzpatrick, Richard Crouchley, Ryan Bown, Priya Jain, Rob Kipa-Williams, Jacqueline Lee Geurts, Michael Cardelle and John De Luca and you literally have enough names to fill out a credits list, as well.
Meanwhile, Renny Harlin, Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley stop by long enough on their way to the bank to demolish the craft service table, which was undoubtedly filled with the finest expired luncheon meat the local grocery store had to offer.
Deep Water
Deep Water attempts to be a survival thriller that harkens back to the disaster movies of the 1970s like The Poseidon Adventure and Airport ’77. Yet, it has no idea why those films work. They work because they have style falling out of their keisters and old-school actors turning every obstacle into a Shakespearean tragedy with tongues in cheeks.
“We can’t go this way. It’s blocked. Oh, cruel fate, why does it trap us like nutrias in a maze Not only does the water threaten to wash away our last hope, but Shelly Winters needs her diabetes medicine, damn it!”
Deep Water tries to be a disaster film, a human drama and a shark movie all at the same time. It does a decent job with the plane crash, but the human drama is anemic at best and senseless at its worst.
For example, two guys hate each other. One is ready to kill the other, but then he has his unconscious body dragged to safety by his rival. In response, he tells his new friend to bear his heart to the girl he loves at the end of the movie.
That is not an A to B to C progression. It is a W to T to F progression.
As for the sharks, the trailer promises goofy shark action. The trailer lies. The sharks are CGI afterthoughts that mostly pick off NPCs. The sharks should elicit some kind of tactics, or dire decision making from the characters that display resourcefulness. The only tactics and decision making the sharks inspire are basically characters getting into rafts instead of swimming in open water.
Deep Purple Water
Aaron Eckhart is one of those guys stuck in a nether region. He doesn’t have leading man charisma, but his chin is too powerful to be totally ignored. So, it is with Deep Water. He is fine for what is required, but he can’t elevate the material.
Whenever I see Eckhart, he mostly makes me think, “I should watch The Missing again. That’s a pretty good modern western.”
One thing I like about Kingsley is that he is not above slumming. He is the one who got me in the theater for Deep Water. I wanted to see Kingsley punch sharks. Alas, he doesn’t even interact with them.
This is the second time Eckhart and Kingsley have teamed up. The first was with the serial killer thriller Suspect Zero. That’s a better slumming Kingsley movie.
As for Renny Harlin, his heart is clearly not in it anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. Whatever. I grant him perpetual pardon for gracing us with Cliffhanger.
Only in one instance did Harlin get me to perk up in Deep Water. A Coast Guard helicopter shows up. It lowers a rescue diver down to the survivors. The rescue diver is a woman. She promptly gets her leg bitten off. While she dangles, screams and bleeds, a shark grabs her and pulls the entire helicopter into the sea.
I imagine Harlin grinning at that sequence and saying with his Finnish accent, “Equality.”
Deep Blue Sea Water
Deep Water ended up being a bad theatrical experience… but not all because of the movie.
I showed up ten minutes early to see a bunch of senior citizens lined up at the door. The theater was locked. A lone high school employee was inside, but she did not have a key because her coworker, who did, did not show up. Apparently, she arrived when a delivery truck got there, and she was able to enter when the driver opened a storage room door.
For whatever reason, the theater employee did not figure out she could let people in through one of the theater exit doors. Instead, she called the manager to bring a key. The manager lived forty-five minutes away.
I stood there for 35 minutes. I could have left, but I was determined to see Kingsley punch a shark (which, of course, never happened).
The manager finally appeared and let us in. The senior citizens then had a meltdown. They came to see the 4 p.m. showing of Michael, but all of the projectors were on timers. Hence, Michael had already been running for half an hour and couldn’t be restarted.
I was genuinely embarrassed by the behavior of those old fogies. For cripes sake, show some dignity. You’re 75-years-old and acting like little bitches because a high school kid got left high and dry by a coworker who didn’t show up for whatever reason. Stuff happens. Deal with it. Nope. Most of them stormed out in a huff.
I missed the first 10 minutes of Deep Water, so my review may ultimately not be completely accurate. As an added bonus, I watched the next ten minutes without sound because the projector had a technical glitch.
It was a really bad day for that poor theater employee who did show up. I was a congenial customer, however. She was just a kid, with a bowl haircut no less. And she gave me a free pass for my next movie.
Whatever. Let’s listen to some Deep Purple and get something good out of this review, at least…
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