ON YouTube you can find a video of a young diver by the name of Jason Statham competing at the Commonwealth Games. It is so long ago he has a thick, black barnet, like Dracula. Otherwise he is having a very bad hair day. “Really gone to pieces in this final, Jason,” says the commentator as Statham slips down the rankings.
Well, I’m delighted to say there was a happy ending to the tale. That unfortunate diver went on to become the multimillionaire star of an enjoyably daft summer blockbuster in which the hero takes on a giant prehistoric shark. Suck on that, water. See you later, sea. The Stath will have his revenge.
Director Jon Turteltaub (Cool Runnings, National Treasure) begins his tale in the past. Jonas Taylor (Statham) was a hot shot rescue diver, but a mission went wrong, forcing him to leave some men behind. Jonas became a Jonah in the industry, so guilt-stricken about what happened he took to a beach in Thailand to chug beer.
Cut to the sea off Shanghai five years later and a research mission funded by an eccentric billionaire (Rainn Wilson). His team of scientists believe they have found another layer beneath the known bottom of the sea. Down goes a mini-submarine which promptly gets into trouble. Something is out there, but what? And why are the pilot’s last words, “Jonas was right”?
The something turns out to be a megalodon, a creature that was supposed to have become extinct millions of years ago. This megalodon is henceforth dubbed “The Meg”, so as not to cause any confusion between Turteltaub’s picture and others which have featured megalodons and mega sharks. It is a busy old world out there in Jawsland.
There follow some two hours of supreme silliness as man fights shark. Women get in on the action, too, with Chinese star Li Bingbing playing a shark specialist and Jessica McNamee a pilot (and Jonas’s ex-wife). Statham believes in equal opportunity action. Equal opportunity objectification, too. There is one scene in which Jonas, fresh out of the shower, obligingly walks around wearing just a towel while Li Bingbing admires his physique. Whatever he was doing on that beach in Thailand it was not drinking beer.
Statham takes on the lion’s share of the quipping, an essential activity for any action hero, and there are plenty of meaty action sequences. As with any shark movie, there are so many nods to the greatness of Jaws I stopped counting, but the beach scene here is a standout.
In Spielberg’s 1975 Oscar winner, the only disappointing moment came when the shark finally showed itself in its entirety, only to look like a giant rubber bath toy. Here, courtesy of technological advances, the shark looks more like the real thing, but it lacks a certain awesomeness in size. If you are going to make a movie about a giant shark you might as well throw scientific accuracy out the porthole and go for it.
Statham efficiently dispatches whatever acting business is needed. There is some nice chemistry between him and Li Bingbing. Ditto with Wilson, who enjoys himself as the obnoxious investor. “You know he looks heroic and he walks fast,” he says of Jonas, “but he’s kind of got a negative attitude.” Jonas, bless his shiny bald head, scowls back magnificently. Only The Meg is grumpier.
Just in case there is anyone out there who is not sick of Hunger Games-style teen dystopian dramas, The Darkest Minds (12A) ** opens this week. Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2&3) and based on the novels by Alexandra Bracken, the picture is set in a future America where disease has killed many children, leaving behind a group of youngsters possessed of strange and frightening powers, not least the ability to terrify adults. An unpleasant idea, and one that is jumbled in the execution.
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