ACTION; 1hr 53 min
STARRING: Jason Statham, Bingbing Lee
Something wicked this way comes… Statham and Meg
After a deep-sea rescue mission in the Philippine Trench goes Horribly Wrong under his watch, Jonas Taylor (Statham) vows not to dive again. Yeah, right. Five years later, when another six-miles-under mission is KO’d by an aggressive and ginormous (but as yet unseen) Thing, Jonas is coaxed from his beery Thailand retreat to a ritzy research station 200 miles off the Chinese coast from whence the now-stranded expedition has taken place.
Director Jon Turteltaub (Phenomenon, but don’t hold that against him) keeps the crew on its toes: barely pausing for a manly breath, Jonas briskly dismisses his psychological trauma and launches his one-man retrieval craft into the lower depths. It’s starting to look a tad crowded down there, what with conveniently single scientist Suyin (Bingbing) prowling around as well. With nothing better to do but slam, ram and brood, the resident predatory creature (which the team discover, to their understandable dismay, is a 24-metre mutated shark known as a Megalodon) takes an instant dislike to the two intruders. Presumably having tired of solitude, it then confounds scientific and audience expectations by cagily following Jonas and Suyin back to the research station.
If it hasn’t struck you by now, irrespective of its big-dollar, CGI bells and whistles, this is full-fat cream cheese. At one stage, Jonas is actually forced to out-swim the shark—which at least is one step from jumping it. It’s more-of-similar silliness from there, as eggheads and Meg go noses to one very big nose and everyone repeatedly underestimates what they’re up against, even though this is what we do.To which I say, not very well, but oh what a hoot it is to watch them lose it. Or most of them, at least. Someone has to save the sinking ship, hint hint...
