GL84
Brought out to South Africa, a professional shark hunter and his assistant are tasked with retrieving a stolen diamond inside a man- eating shark located in the waters, only for a ruthless crime-lord to complicate his mission and tries to complete it quickly.This one wasn't all that bad of an effort though there's some problems with it. One of the main issues against this one is the fact that there's a far greater emphasis on the rather tedious and bland crime/thriller antics than it does on the overall horror tones of the shark attacks. Since there's a great deal of time in the first half here going on about the missing diamond and the double- cross between the crime lord and his boss that really takes up quite a bit of time here which really holds off the horror action considerably. Likewise, it's also filled with a slew of scenes that are based around that crime/thriller scenario from the encounters with the thugs and the meeting up with the two in meetings over what's being done to retrieve the diamond which are basically filler scenes to prevent this from really settling into a proper horror angle. Even the late-film angle of the sibling rivalry between the two of them makes no sense of it's inclusion and readily screams useless material that's unnecessary in the film as a whole. From the numerous shootouts and encounters with the gun-toting henchmen in the later half there's a lot of rather fun action scenes throughout here that don't have any kind of real horror action that it really does seem more like an action/thriller rather than a wholesale horror film, and it does conflict so wildly with the true horror action within here that there's a disjointed pace here where it's all about a series of crime/thriller scenes before it clumsily inserts a shark attack then carries on with the crime/thriller afterward to an extended time without going back, and overall this here really hurts this one. There's still some rather fun moments featured amongst the rather troubling antics, starting with the film's enjoyable pace here to still keep this enjoyable while holding off the film's flaws. By constantly keeping the film going forward with different encounters, brawls and gunfights that even though there's no real shark action featured here, the film does manage to keep moving along at a rather enjoyable and overall frantic pace which is what keeps it interesting. That way once the few attacks do come into play here it's got enough to be worthwhile, and there's some good attacks here in the opening beach attack that gets this started off nicely, the marina attack that has some fun stalking scenes of it going around the oblivious party-goers before the main assault and the rather creepy exploration of the shipwreck below the surface where they encounter the main shark in numerous close calls that leads to a chilling swim back to the surface for some really fine scenes overall here. Likewise, the big finale here where they battle against the shark with the different tactics and managing to get some nice rousing action covered against it which is quite fun. Overall, though, there's way too much crime/thriller here instead of true horror.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.
