Aguas profundas

I suppose I can give Dark Tide some credit for its realistic, non manipulative depiction of the great white shark. This is certainly no monster movie. So what kind of movie is it then?

Dark Tide would have to qualify as an adventure drama, or rather an anti adventure drama. It seems that each time director John Stockwell goes seaward with a production, the movies get progressively worse. Into the Blue, was entertaining, but certainly dumb. Blue Crush, was dumb and unentertaining. This latest movie is just confused and almost devoid of any reason to watch it.

I return to my point about Dark Tide not being a horror film. So why then are the characters deliberately as uninteresting and obnoxious as the cast of any Friday the 13th sequel. Halle Berry is playing the kind of half-assed, adolescent role that I'm used to seeing Jennifer Lopez play. Dark Tide gives you an idea of how far she has fallen in the last ten years. She is sleeping with the fishes.

The movie lumbers along for a good hour, with nothing except the quality of its underwater photography (getting you nose to nose with twenty foot sharks) to keep you in your seat. The characters exchange lines of sloppy dialogue and do silly things, until it's time for distaster to strike, in the last half hour. It's fair to say that Stockwell manages to generate some suspense in the climax, but he stretches it out too long, and the camera work is disorienting.

The whole thing doesn't work. It lacks direction, intelligence, and professional acting. For all I know, Dark Tide may just have been an excuse for Stockwell to go diving in South Africa with the sharks and leave the storyline behind.

The plot of Dark Tide is not good. Character development is overacted to the point of parody while also completely underdeveloped. None of us care about any single one of these Characters, or their relationships. Halle Berry works with what she's been given, but she is miscast in this movie and she's about as good of an actor as Kristen Stewart. Sure, she is beautiful, but her acting has never been believable or diverse in anything I've ever seen her in. She's very much one flavor only, and I feel she only ever puts in "just" what's required of her and nothing more. Zero charisma.

All that said, this plot, the story, the characters, the conflicts and situations, the decisions, the choices, predicaments, dynamics of characters and their relationships, the proposals and screenplay are NOT believable. At all. Half of the movie is unnecessary entirely. We don't need, or care about, the arguments between a husband and wife, exes, a greedy and selfish father and son, and we don't, or even care to, understand what all of Halle's overacted anger and mood swings are about. There are WAY too many conflicts, one on top of the other, and a snowball of ridiculously dumb decisions.

But, when it comes to the sharks, that is all very believable. They are not dangerous, but when you tease them and provoke them, they tease back... it's worth a watch. Once.

The reviews who say that this movie is bad, boring, and the characters are unlikeable simply expect a different kind of movie and have forgotten the joy in a drama with thrilling elements.

This is not "Mission Impossible: Panties in a Twist" or whatever the latest incarnation is. (And I do enjoy those!) This movie is is a character study, an abundance of beautiful cinematography, and a shark chasing thriller all in one. There is a sense of realism, especially with the interactions between the characters, who react in line with their own backstories- characters who are simultaneously heroic, anti-heroic, brilliant, and ridiculously self absorbed and stupid.

Additionally, Dark Tide perfectly captured the sense of sheer peace and quiet that consumes you once your head is below the waves in the open ocean. I've been scuba diving all over the world, and driven a boat like in this movie. The movie captured the sense of reverence in the water and for the water, and took me far away to reefs of my own past.

Is it thrilling? Absolutely- the action scenes were tense, and you felt the weight of the sharks gliding silently just inches away. Is it slower? I was never bored. I enjoyed the characters, flaws and all. In the end, if anything, I wanted more closure and final introspection. But that is the only thing I found lacking. If you remotely like the ocean and treat it as a thriller with a slower burn, you will enjoy the movie.

6 1/2 stars.

What possessed someone with Halle Berry's acting chops to take on this very tepid melodrama is anyones guess.

The film starts out promisingly enough with a suspenseful shark attack that delivers the goods, but quickly degenerates in soap-opera-ish melodrama that never really engages or interests the viewer on any level.

Berry phones in her performance on this show, and whilst some of the cinematography is beautiful I certainly didn't see $25 million on screen. It all just reeks a little of missed opportunity to me. I can see why the film was relegated to the DVD bargain bin in so many territories.

While Dark Tide isn't a terrible film, it's certainly not a good one either.

A feeble 4...

I liked Darktide mainly because of it's camera work and portrayal of the Great White shark.

The underwater camera work appeared to be original and was impressive in terms of continuity, unlike most shark films where footage is borrowed from a documentary and pasted in.

The behaviour of the sharks is also more realistic, showing that people with experience can swim with them outside the cage and not be attacked.

The film is let down by a thin plot and bland characters.

I would rate this as the third best shark movie after Jaws(obviously) and The Reef(underrated).