Shark hunter At one time, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster “Jaws” about a man-eating shark spawned a whole host of imitators of varying degrees of imitation. This film is one of these, but its undeniable advantage is the fact that it does not even try to “swim” into the territory of Spielberg and in general, in fact, is a kind of “genre bait” for the viewer.
The plot begins with an incident on a boat, when its owner is thrown overboard by unknown people and fed to sharks. After some time, a friend of the victim arrives at the scene of the tragedy to investigate the circumstances of the incident.
The friend is played by Casper Van Dean, whose career after “Star Troops” and “Sleepy Hollow” moved to films of the category “B”, where, by the way, there were also a lot of successful projects – take, for example, this film, “Fun” or “Peton”. The movie cleverly hides behind the screen of zoohorror, but in fact turns out to be a thriller with elements of an action movie about megacorporations that decided to go to extreme measures to cover their not quite legal business.
Van Dean’s company included the great actor Ernie Hudson, whom you could see in Ghostbusters, Jennifer McShane, who later returned to the franchise in the triquel, and Bentley Mitchum as one of the villains. By the way, it is interesting that the "Sharks" were very popular in the video market and have already spawned several imitators, that is, as a result, such "Fattles" turned out. The second part of this franchise is not particularly exciting, although it is also not bad, but the triquel is undoubtedly the most spectacular in terms of effects and the title monster - there the characters fight with the megalodon, but in this film - with bad guys who made the local sharks slowly but surely go crazy.
Directing is quite high-quality and captivating from the first minutes thanks to a well-built intrigue and an excellent alternation of action scenes, calm episodes and horror episodes with the participation of sharks. The acting game is excellent, strong secondary artists are occupied in the frame, who were finally allowed to turn around here. But a separate mention, of course, deserves the work of the composer Serge Colbert, who wrote for the film a bright and memorable soundtrack, for a long time cut into memory, full of interesting ethnic notes.
In general, "Sharks" can disappoint those who fell for the spectacular posters and expected horror about sea cannibals, but will give a lot of pleasant minutes to the rest. A film that, in principle, can be watched by the whole family - there are no bright scenes of violence, candid episodes or quite obvious dismemberment. Still, everywhere in the genre graph declared "horrors" - and as a horror "Shark", of course, no, but as a bright adventure movie with many action-packed episodes - this is one of the main video releases of the late nineties.
8 out of 10