Cards on the table, when I was sifting through all the titles of films and TV series coming out this week and deciding which ones to review, I had to include “Into the Deep” on the roster if only because it’s a shark movie starring Richard Dreyfuss.
Not that I expected this sharks-and-pirates thriller to even swim in the same waters as “Jaws,” one of the best movies of all time. This is a serviceable, suitably gory and intermittently scary film with some solid action sequences. Alas, the dialogue embraces hokey clichés, the plot doesn’t know when to quit — and most egregious of all, the Dreyfuss character remains on the shores. You’re gonna have a shark movie and you’re not going to have Richard Dreyfuss in a boat at some point, making some kind of meta reference? Come on, man!
“Into the Deep” kicks off with a well-filmed prologue in which a little girl named Cassidy (Quinn P Hensley) is learning how to tread water, and she’s doing great, but then she keeps telling her dad, “Stop kicking me,” but spoiler alert, that’s not dad bumping up against her — and while Cassidy makes it to the boat intact, Pops is churned into chum.
Cut to present day, where the grown-up Cassidy (Scout Taylor-Compton) has become an oceanographer, but is haunted by nightmares from that horrific day. As fate and plot contrivance would have it, Cassidy’s husband Gregg (Callum McGown) is a treasure hunter who has gotten word of a bounty of gold coins that are in the same stretch of waters where Cassidy’s dad was chomped up. Cassidy decides it’s time to face her fears, so she joins Gregg on the obligatory Rickety but Reliable Old Boat captained by Gregg’s old friend Benz (Stuart Townsend), and off we sail.
What’s that? Where’s Richard Dreyfuss in all this? Glad you asked. Dreyfuss plays Cassidy’s grandfather, Seamus, who is some sort of professor of Marine Life Something and tells his students about “Seamus’ Rule: You’re a visitor [to the water]. You are a guest of theirs, and they are allowing you into their kingdom …” Seamus is also a wise and caring counsel for Cassidy, urging her to face those “monsters” from her past.
Once we’re out on the waters, all hell breaks loose. Turns out hungry sharks are everywhere, turning the treasure hunt into a bloody mess. On top of that, a band of ruthless pirates led by Jon Seda’s cigar-chomping, scar-faced, screen-chewing Jordan infiltrates Benz’s boat and orders Cassidy and company to dive into those shark-infested waters to retrieve a lost stash of drugs. Yikes. Perhaps Cassidy should have stayed home with Grandpa Seamus and confronted those monsters another time.
Director Christian Sesma stages a few impressive underwater sequences, but some of the key performances are a bit on the wooden side, and as much I love Richard Dreyfuss, it’s as if he’s in a different movie most of the time, playing a character so thinly drawn he’s almost like an apparition. As the closing credits roll, Dreyfuss appears as himself in a box on the screen, saying, “I’d like to ask for your help in shark conservation, ironically enough. … The truth is, these mysterious and magnificent hunters are essential to the balance of marine ecosystems …”
He’s not wrong. Whether it’s an OK thriller like “Into the Deep” or the classic that is “Jaws,” the shark is never the villain. The shark is just being a shark. Now, that Amity Island Mayor Larry Vaughn, THERE was a villain…