>>REVIEW
INTO THE BLUE
STARRING Paul Walker, Jessica Alba and Scott Caan
DIRECTED BY John Stockwell
Opens Friday September 30
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I’m sure this sounded like a super idea to somebody in Hollywood. Take a buff guy, a cute girl, a funny sidekick and throw them into a life or death situation in the Bahamas. With crystal blue water it’ll look great and there’ll hardly be any wardrobe costs because they’ll always be in bathing suits or just their underwear. For good measure we’ll throw in some guys with guns, hungry sharks and topless sunbathing. And the tagline will be "Treasure has its price." Apparently even fool’s gold costs $10.95 a ticket.
There’s great potential in a film plot about four people who, while looking for sunken treasure, stumble onto something far more dangerous. The idea of making choices between what you need, what you want and what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it isn’t original, but it provides a lot of possibilities. Possibilities that director John Stockwell never fully takes advantage of. The film’s biggest problem is its promotion as an action-thriller, because, unfortunately, that’s only partly correct. The thrills don’t kick into gear until the last 20 minutes of the movie, leaving about one-and-a-half hours of lacklustre build-up. Time that could’ve been spent twisting the audience around who to trust or what to do instead is spent on conversations about being rich and a lot of pretty swimming scenes.
Showcasing the beautiful underwater scenery isn’t a bad thing, but there should be a limit on how much screen time can be devoted to Paul Walker’s six-pack and Jessica Alba’s ass. These anatomical delights are obviously the only reasons these actors were hired, because performance wise, neither one brings anything inventive to their roles. When expressing emotion, Walker has a Keanu Reeves-like quality about him, and Alba is simply required to be the cute, doe-eyed girlfriend who wants love to be more important than treasure. Scott Caan does what he can as the comic relief who means well but just causes problems. It’s all very cliché.
Had the filmmakers been able to spread the tense action and suspense of the last act over the course of the whole film, Into The Blue would’ve been more than just another so-so fall movie. Instead it’s not good enough to run against the big boys of summer and nowhere near ready to join the winter Oscar race. |
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