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Shark Attack (1999)

** (out of 4)

A marine biologist played by Casper Van Dien (yeah, I know) goes to Port Amanzi Africa after his best friend is mysteriously eaten by a shark. It turns out that shark attacks are up all over the region so Mr. Van Dien must find out the cause and it turns out that a greedy real estate owner (Ernie Hudson) is having sharks eat people so that he can buy up all their land. Sounds plausible, right? If you walk into this movie and are willing to turn your brain off then you might get some mild entertainment out of it but if you're one who needs to take everything serious then it's best to stay away from this thing. This is certainly a bad movie and it's the cheese factor that gives it some unintentional laughs and a lot of them come from Van Dien's performance. He's certainly not very believable in the role. You know how in a great performance the actor can make you believe everything they're saying? Well, in this film it was very hard to believe that Van Dien knew anything that was coming out of his mouth and the viewer can tell this. That's part of the reason for the laughs but another is because his character comes off like some sort of ancient gladiator. There are a couple scenes in the film where people are getting attacked by sharks and the brave Van Dien just jumps into the water, swims over to the shark and takes care of the situation. I'm no shark expert but I've seen Shark Week on Discovery enough to know that you don't go messing with a shark during a feeding frenzy. The majority of the shark scenes are obviously just stock footage taken from real sharks. It's obvious because each time we see the "main" shark it's different in size than the previous time we saw it. The attack scenes are also rather cheap.

Scientist Cordell McQueen is killed in South Africa in an attack by a shark, the very thing he's gone there to investigate. A cryptic message left on his colleague Casper Van Dien's answering machine sends Van Dien and McQueen's sister Jenny McShane are off to South Africa to investigate.

What they find when they reach the coastal village where the attack occurred is a town ready to die. The resort that Ernie Hudson operates has no tourists and the fisherman don't go out at all because they're afraid of the water. Over the past few years there's been an unaccounted for spike in the number of shark attacks. The only thing operating is a scientific research institute where another colleague Bentley C. Mitchum is conducting research into a cancer cure.

Of course all this ties together with Mitchum conducting some really ghoulish experiments and Hudson playing everyone for suckers. Mitchum maybe thinking of a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but Hudson's got a far more practical motive for his actions.

Shark Attack is your average action adventure film with the cast all fitting nicely into their roles. One thing I would have done was cut Mitchum's death scene, just have him die with no last words. That particular piece of dialog was truly atrocious. Someone should have sicced one of those spiked up sharks on the writers.

Unlike most opinion I think the sharks are realistic - the reason being the majority are seen as stock footage that so obiviously has no relation to the actors in terms of the scene. This film manages to have shark attacks with no tension or excitment - Casper Van Dien is constantly throwing himself into the waterwith a knife or something to take on the sharks - and never even looks worried. Jenny McShane runs round in little briefs etc - it's obivious why she is included in the cast. This is so lame that it provides no enterainment at all. Shark attacks bring out a basic fear in all of us - that this film manages to bring NONE of that to the screen is really bad.

....as my DVD player stopped playing it after about an hour. I am in no doubt however it was doing me a favour, saving me before my brain had totally rotted. Luckily I did get to see the car chase, which contains quite possibly the worst editing I have ever seen in my life (the police are driving and old Alfa Romeo 33, which suddenly changes to a mark 1 Ford Sierra, then back to an Alfa, then crashes as a Sierra! Do these people even watch the film when they've finished making it? The cars don't even look remotely similar!)

But I digress. As you've probably worked out by now I hate this film. Even if it has got Ernie Hudson in it (who will always be a God in my eyes for appearing in Ghostbusters.) Most of the movie has nothing to do with sharks, just corrupt cops. I guess they'd run out of money by this point so you get the good old 'z-list actor throwing themselves around in the water whilst someone lets off red food dye' trick. Unless your life depends on it, do not watch this film. And even then only do if you've got a lot to live for.....

One of the most underrated creature features ever made, 'Shark Attack' is an action packed monster fest that actually does a good job at entertaining.Sure, it's not as good as 'Jaws' or 'deep Blue Sea' , but at least it got the job right.So why is this movie getting so many negative reviews? I liked it.I didn't love it,but I found it to be enjoyable.The real stars of the movie are Casper Van Dien from 'Python' and Jenny McShane from 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'.They both did a really good job in the movie and should do another creature feature together.Although not excellent, this movie does deliver plenty of action and entertainment.