Dark Tide

If this would've been a documentary, I would've been full of praise. Beautiful pictures, even those without Halle Berry in them, and great environment. Unfortunately I cannot judge this just by those underwater shots. I have to also rate the dialog and the story. Both of which lack a lot, not only in comparison to the scenery.

Halle Berry and her love interest in this are annoying to the point they make the real bad guy look like the only sane person in this thing. And that is just because he has a clear goal, nothing will get him off that. But our heroes? Better not ask. Especially because their answer will bore and/or annoy you to death. I love Halle, but only watching this because of her or the sharks has to be a decision only you can make ... don't count on an intriguing story though!

.... and wishing they'd arrive soon and gobble up the entire cast of this terminally boring movie. But, alas, they didn't; and the thing dragged on and on interminably... until, after what felt like an eternity, it finally reached its always predictable, anticlimactic climax.

What can we say about the cast? It would perhaps be more accurate to describe them as the miscast. Halle Berry looks great. If I went through what she went through in this movie I'd look like something the cat brought in. But even at her most artistically bedraggled, Berry looks as if she could just slip into a D&G dress and sashay down the catwalk in Paris or Milan. Boat skippers have wind-washed complexions. Throughout this movie Berry always looks as if she could have just stepped out of the beauty parlor, with her perfect eye-liner, her manicured nails and her perfect tan. Her hair gets tousled every now and then, but that's about the extent of her dishevelment. If they wanted me to believe that she was the head of a model agency, or the editor of a woman's magazine, I might have bought it. But a shark expert who spends half her life on a boat? No way, Jose. And the rest of the miscast were no more believable.

In fairness, the cinematography was excellent. The sharks were great, too. But they arrived about an hour and twenty minutes too late, for which they will not be lightly forgiven by anyone who got suckered into wasting 94 minutes of their life watching this god awful movie.

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.

This is one of the worse movies I have ever seen. The cast is absolutely horrible. The acting is horrible. The plot is horrible. Don't waste a minute of your time on this movie.

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.