"The Meg" by Jon Turteltaub - movie review

The year is 1975. Still little known director Steven Spielberg and a team of legendary actors create a thriller that changes the history of cinema. "Jaws" becomes the most successful film for his time, and later in an unforgettable classic that manages to influence people to the point that some are afraid to swim alone at sea. The year is now 2018. Shark horror films are already a great deal (I would say too much). This list also includes "The Meg". After an underwater expedition in which top diver Jonas Tyler (Jason Statham) faces a strange creature of enormous size, he makes a fatal decision, then refuses to dive for the rest of his days.

Years later, however, the most modern underwater lab makes an expedition that discovers that the deepest point of the ocean is far from being its limit - a world unfolding under it. During the expedition in question, the submarine team was attacked by ... you guessed it! An unfamiliar creature of enormous size, and it is necessary to seek a rescue exit. The team includes Laurie (Jessica McNammy), Jonas's ex-wife. And he will have to fight the demons of his past to get back into the depths of the ocean. In fact, the team of underwater experts is a prehistoric beast - Megalodon, which is about 4 times larger than the white shark. Over the years, movies that include underwater monsters are, in most cases, a rather bloody and horrible horror, flying limbs, guts, pounds of blood, and similar details. In this movie (and that's one of the few things I've appreciated in it) things do not look so bad - at least bloodshed is much less than the vision we're used to associating with other similar titles. As a spectator who has watched films of all genres and different qualities, I knew what to expect - and the creative team behind this project. Even with such low expectations, I was still very disappointed. The lack of logic in what is happening is not even one of the problems that is worth commenting, because in such a type of film the goal is rather entertainment without the need for credibility.

One of the main problems, however, is the excessive experience of comic moments in the dialogue. In any situation (even those in which their life is under serious threat), the characters did not stop to shake their badly written and often awkward jokes. In fact, it did not bother me to worry, even for a moment, about their destiny. At least I was able to appreciate their sense of humor ... Like most badly made American movies, there was another major problem. We know that cinema is a visual art - everything is possible for most things to show, not to say. Here, however, we are constantly flooded with unnecessary information, which in no way helps the story. Or scientific, to explain something quite complicated, which we will hardly remember, or - even worse - the danger information we have seen in the previous picture. At times I had the feeling that even if I close my eyes, I would still understand absolutely everything that is happening. It's a movie that can be safely released on the radio. One must not miss a wonderful combination of absolutely every known painted moment - from predictable relationships, through a protagonist who fights his past, to scenes with a bluish-determined vision and grading-emotional music. There is everything! A lot! Only the US flag was missing in every second shot. And it is clear that there is a mandatory political retreat experience - the team is made up of Americans, African Americans, Asians, and Indians to avoid being angry and / or offended.

The audience is aware that when watching a movie with Jason Statham, his character will be just immortal. Even if all known gods appear and they ride huge sharks that launch skyscraper-sized rackets, I would still put my money on Statham. There are a lot of such films with him, whose action scenes are well-resolved - with a stirring mozzincense, good technical performance and enough attraction to distract the audience and not to think much about logic. Here, however, such moments were missing. Much of the shark collisions are flat and often filled with dynamically cut shots that are totally incomprehensible. There were no surprising twists or unexpected things. Everything we suppose to happen in the scene in question is exactly the same. The special effects are far from the capabilities of high-budget American masters in this area. The shark in Jaws looks better and sometimes more straightforward than that, even 43 years later, which is really ridiculous. The potential of 3D cinema was not used at all.

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