With: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Angus Sampson, Lucy Barrett, Richard Crouchley, Molly Wright, Li Wenhan, Zhao Simei, Na Shi, Lakota Johnson, Mark Hadlow, Rarmian Newton, Madeleine West, Rob Kipa-Williams, Kelly Gale, Ryan Bown, Kate Fitzpatrick, Elijah Tamati, Chrissy Jin, John De Luca, Michael Cardelle
Written by: Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause, Damien Power, based on a story by Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause, additional writing by John Kim
Directed by: Renny Harlin
MPAA Rating: R for violent content/bloody images and some language
Renny Harlin's disaster-movie-meets-shark-movie Deep Water feels as if it time-traveled from the 1990s; despite the novelty of it, everything is numbingly familiar, and worse, it takes itself far too seriously.
Ben (Aaron Eckhart) works for an airline and has been away from his wife and sick child for too long. A first officer, he joins pilot Rich (Ben Kingsley) for a flight to Shanghai.
Passengers include the obnoxious, constantly-complaining Dan (Angus Sampson); young Cora (Molly Wright), who is tasked with looking after her younger stepbrother Finn (Elijah Tamati); drunk, bullying members of an American sports team; Sam (Li Wenhan) and Lilly (Zhao Simei), members of a Chinese e-sports team having trouble expressing their feelings for one another; grandma Becky (Kate Fitzpatrick), and gamer Matt (Richard Crouchley), who crushes on flight attendant Zoe (Na Shi), etc.
A malfunctioning phone charger starts a fire in the cargo hold, and things grow quickly from bad to worse, necessitating a crash landing in the sea. Unfortunately this particular spot is infested with hungry sharks!
Deep Water smacks of the kind of movie that was prevalent in the 1990s, i.e. rip-offs of Die Hard. (As the director of Die Hard 2, even Harlin was in on this trend.) Angus Sampson's "Dan" character, the troublemaker who would gladly sacrifice anyone around him to save his own life, comes right from Die Hard and the cocaine-sniffing Harry Ellis character.
In fact, all the passengers are cut from familiar templates, all the way down to the drunken frat-boy-type who bumps into the Chinese girl and starts aggressively flirting ("Ooh! Feisty! I like it!"). The grandma Patty character is jokingly referred to by Matt as "Shelley Winters" (of The Poseidon Adventure), even though it's highly unlikely a 20-something gamer would know who that was.
A character whose leg is stuck in the wreckage is given a tearful goodbye as the hull slowly cracks around them. And the main character is given a checkered past (he once punched a superior officer and was ejected from the Air Force) as well as a young son with cancer that he's trying to get home to.
The shark attacks are ridiculous and the sharks are made of cheap-looking CGI. The entire thing feels rehashed and reworked and worn out. Even the title, Deep Water, was used just four years ago on a Ben Affleck/Ana de Armas erotic thriller. This movie is so empty, it doesn't even have its own title.
Magenta Light Studios released a bare-bones Blu-ray with only optional English subtitles and scene selections. The transfer looks just fine, and the DTS-HD 5.1 audio mix is likewise fine.
