Into the Blue (2005)

That was an excellent one.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Don't listen to the negative reviews

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

You can just imagine the discussions among the studio executives."Let's make a film with Jessica Alba in a bikini!" "Great idea! What's the plot angle?" "Plot? With Jess in a bikini do we need a plot? Make her character a swimwear model or something!" "Naah, too obvious. What about pirates of the Caribbean, sunken treasure, that sort of thing? Make Jess a scuba diver. In a bikini, of course".And so we end up with a sort of unacknowledged remake of "The Deep" from the seventies. Like the earlier film, it is about treasure hunters diving for sunken treasure and tangling with drug-dealing gangsters, and like that film it relies heavily upon the charms of its scantily-clad leading lady, Alba here and Jacqueline Bissett in "The Deep". (Indeed, "The Deep" itself can be seen as an unacknowledged remake of "Underwater" from the fifties, a film whose main attraction was the sight of a scantily-clad Jane Russell). "Into the Blue", however, does offer a bonus to its target young male audience; we have two couples, not just one, diving for the treasure, so we get to see two pretty girls in bikinis. (Ashley Scott is the other).There is a problem with remakes, acknowledged or unacknowledged. Or rather, there are two problems. If you try to remake a good film, the critics will gleefully claim that your effort is nowhere near as good as the original. And if you try to remake a bad one, they will (equally gleefully) accuse you of desperately trying to succeed with a formula which failed last time. Well, "The Deep" was (in my view at least) a pretty bad film, and "Into the View" does not improve on it. Indeed, it is probably even worse.The main flaws of "The Deep" were a clichéd plot, some manic over-acting from Robert Shaw and some rather dull photography. The main flaws of "Into the Blue" are firstly a plot which is so tortured as to come, at times, close to well-nigh incomprehensible. Secondly, the dialogue is often difficult to hear clearly. I spent the whole of the running-time, for example, thinking that Paul Walker's character was called "Gerry"; it wasn't until I saw the closing credits that I realised this was actually supposed to be "Jared". Mishearing a character's name would not in itself have spoilt the film for me, but this was merely one symptom of a wider problem, and frequently mishearing crucial lines of dialogue certainly did spoil it.And thirdly there is the acting. Alba put me in mind of Louis B. Mayer's famous dictum about Esther Williams- "Wet she's a star, dry she ain't". She earned a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress. None of her co-stars were so nominated, although if Mayer had seen their performances here he might have opined that "wet they ain't stars, and dry they ain't either". And that includes that other big name, Walker, for once in his career acting in a film without any fast cars in it.Alba and Walker are merely wooden, but Scott Caan as Bryce, the other boy in the foursome, is something worse than wooden. He makes Bryce so unsympathetic (admittedly, with a lot of help from the scriptwriters) that we end up wondering just when he is going to get his well-deserved come-uppance along with the rest of the villains. Incredibly, however, we are supposed to accept Bryce as one of the good guys, even though he can see no moral objection to collaborating with a vicious gang of drug smugglers and even though he shows very little emotion when his girlfriend is killed by a shark. (He would be a lot more upset about losing the gold than he is about losing his girl). Bryce is supposed to be a hot-shot New York lawyer; the New York Bar Association should sue the film-makers for implying that they would ever permit such an unprincipled jerk to practice law.About the most one can say for the film is that the underwater sequences are generally attractive and well done. And, of course, Jessica Alba looks gorgeous. But, I'm afraid, sometimes bikinis are just not enough to turn a badly written, badly directed and badly acted film into a good one. 3/10

***SPOILERS*** Spectacular under as well as out of the water photography overcome the somewhat lukewarm plot about the crash of a plane loaded with 800 cartons of cocaine in the Bahamas on top of a sunken ship, that was sailing from New Orleans, the "Zephyr" that sunk during a hurricane back in 1861 with a sh*t load of gold bars and jewelry that was leaving the states as the Civil War was about to brake out. This treasure of gold and coke was discovered by beach boy Jared played by the late Paul Walker and his hot girlfriend Samantha, Jessica Alba, while scuba diving off the coast.It's Jered's friend Bryce, Scott Caan, from NYC who's a mouthpiece or shyster-Lawyer-for drug dealers who talks both Jared and Samathata or Sam as she's called to go diving for the loot that in the end leads to Bryce's girlfriend, that he picked up the night before at a Go-Go bar, Amanda, Ashley Scott, who ends up getting attacked by a 15 foot shark who ripped off her leg thus killing her.There's also a side story to all this in British drug lord Reyes,James Frain, whom the cocaine belonged to forcing Jared & Bryce to retrieve his drugs or else he'll have Jared's girlfriend Sam deep-ed sixth-ed and turned into shark bait at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. there's another sub-plot to all this in that Rayes's partner***SPOILER***"Aquatic Theme Park" tour guide Derek Bates, Josh Brolin, who feels he's trying to screw him out of his share of the cocaine has him and his boys-local Bahamans hoodlums-knocked off so he can keep all the drugs all for himself along with the wreckage, some 150 million in gold and jewelry, of the sunken ship "Zephyr".***SPOILERS*** The action gets fast & furious as well as wet and waterlogged in the final moments of the movie with Jared and Sam slugging it out with Bates and whatever he still has left of his gang after he had most of them murdered along with his partner the snake-like and double crossing British drug kingpin Reyes. Bates get his much like the shark in "Jaws" did with an pressurized air tank slamming into him that exploded on impact. The film ends much like the 1977 movie "The Deep" did with Bryce after diving into the sea to retrieve a rusted cannon from the sunken ship "Zephyr" discovers the hundreds of gold bars in it that the cannon, by crashing into the ship, uncovered!

I thought this was an excellent pop movie. Its fun, watchable and yes, Jessica Alba looks totally hawt.To do justice to this film, you should watch the "Making of" documentary which shows the absolutely beautiful Jessica skin diving with massive sharks - wearing only that stunning bikini, whilst the dive camera crew are wearing chain mail suits for protection. That image of her magnificent body outstretched with her arm reaching out for a shark is one of the most memorable cinematic images ever. I swear I could spend an entire week on a liveonboard watching this on repeat.There is probably no chance of her doing this sort of dangerous stunts like this again, thanks to her fame. The insurance premium could sink a battleship.The plot is about as believable as Brokeback Mountain - but it doesn't claim any pretensions - it is what it is. A fun movie, highly watchable and worth buying on Blue Ray thanks to the pretty Miss Alba's taunt tight bodacious body. She should have won an Academy Award for her curves.

Jared is a diver who ends up in trouble with a drug-lord whose cocaine has ended up in the bottom of the ocean.This is average action movie, however I'm not sure I'd call it an action movie as there is limited amounts of action. The acting is, actually better then expected, but still poor....I mean Josh Brolin is in this movie...He raises the bar for Walker and Alba, who sink miserably.The cinematography was brilliant, beautiful beaches with wonderful shots of the ocean floor and the its amazing inhabitants...It was genuinely better than expected...I mean, you've got Jessica Alba in water...What else could you possibly want?