L'année du requin

As I'm writing this review, there's just another one here about this movie and damn it's harsh!

No, it's not a masterpiece as Jaws or other shark movies can be.. Wait a minute, is there any other masterpiece in this genre ? Anyway, there are some very smart camera moves and really good use of short focal length lenses. I've been impressed several times of how intelligent some stuff are revealed on the screen.

Some actors are not that great and some shots feel a bit off, but it doesn't make this movie a bad one. It's honest and sincere and not "woke" (Damn, I hate this word) at all ! I had a pretty good time watching it and you might have one too.

And don't forget that you might need a bigger boat !

Can you make a movie about a seaside resort terrorized - or at least thrown off kilter - by a killer shark and not take *Jaws* into account? That's the question this movie posed for me. It does not, in any way that I caught, make reference to, much less offer a parody of, the famous horror film. That for me was a problem because it then becomes just another movie on the same subject, with radically reduced resources. The script offers no interesting new angles. So why bother?

If you're going to tackle the same subject as a very well-known film, you can either parody the predecessor or try to outdo it. This film did neither. So what was the point?

First I would like to get things straight. This is certainly not a comedy, and I really don't understand the rating of this film!

A film with a shark probably will have the misfortune to be compared with Jaws. Of course there are similarities, it's about a killer shark. There was a bit of comedy in Jaws, but that certainly didn't make it a comedy. The film is describing the life in a small French city with a very tourist seeking beach. We're in the city of La Pointe, not much happening, the city living off tourists.

Second in command at the police department Maja Bordenave (Marina Fois) is being told by German tourists that they have seen a shark. At the same time a man on a surfboard is missing.

The beach is closed as a leg is found with marks of shark teeths.

Maja is three days from retiring, 49 years old, starting young, but she wants to fight the shark. She is getting a week to solve the problem. With help from her colleagues Blaise (Jean-Pascal Zadi) and Eugenie (Christine Gautier) they hunt the shark down and shoot it with a tranquilliser, capturing it.

But that's not enough, soon the shark is hunting in La Pointe again. Maja is called an assassin, on the ground of more shark victims. She retires from her job.

Trying to relax with husband Thierry (probably the hardest working actor in France, Kad Merad) she really wants to end the horror and kill the shark. Nearly all in La Pointe don't want her help.

Well, that's except her former colleagues Blaise and Eugenie. The three sails out for the final fight with the shark... I think this is much better than what has been written on this site. This is a very good movie, and really this is a very fine acting all around, especially Marina Fois.

I spent one month to finish this film, and i slept like 5 time during it played.

There's nothing funny nothing to tell in this movie. At the beggining i thought it might be fun, maybe the way they will do, or the story would go to the place i never think about.

It was plain, no flavor nothing at all, if it's a plain toast you still have a slightly sweetness taste in it, but not this film. All I saw was a paranoid officer versus the world.

What a waste of all actors/actress in this film, they are good but put in the wrong place, wrong story. And this is the first time I saw a french movie pas drôle pas de profondeur et aussi nul, je suis déçue.

Absolutely awful comedy in actual fact it really is not a comedy and I cannot even see why it would be billed as a comedy. They have two of the funniest comedians France has at the moment Kad Merad and Marina Foïs are incredibly funny comedians but here none of their skills are used.

This was to be expected here this is not a film about a shark off the coast of south-west France it is a film about population perception of a threat and this is made right after the two years of Covid and it is really an allegory of what happens when a population is threatened by an external enemy real or otherwise and this is really to me what this is about how people take sides people decide what is harmful who is harmful it becomes a bitching marathon a sort of they are doing this because of that kind of deal.

Not entirely sure this was conscious by the writers of this film but to me at the metalevel this is obviously what this is talking about... So forget the sharks forget the lipservice jibes about global warming aka climate short-change but instead focus on population reactions

Having said that it is nonetheless an absolute piece of trite rubbish with some of the best actors again must be said totally underused misused it is a shocker I give it a score of one or two tops. It has no pulse of rhythm at any point.

A shameful display.