Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: In “Deep Water,” a new Aaron Eckhart survival film now playing in theatres, a flight goes down in the middle of the Pacific leaving survivors to risk shark infested waters to find safety.

CAST: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Angus Sampson, Kelly Gale, Madeleine West, Molly Belle Wright, Kate Fitzpatrick. Directed by Renny Harlin.

REVIEW: Renny Harlin is no stranger to shark movies. His 1999 film “Deep Blue Sea” saw researchers terrorized by sharks with genetically enlarged brains. Harlin returns to shark infested storytelling with “Deep Warter,” but this time leaves the intelligent part behind.

“Deep Water” begins on an intercontinental flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Overseeing the 257 passengers, including Dan (Angus Sampson), a loud-mouth chain-smoker whose suitcase causes problems mid-flight, are the ready-for-retirement Captain Richard Lewis (Sir Ben Kingsley) and world-weary First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) who picked up this flight instead of dealing with a personal tragedy at home.

“Looked like you wanted to take a swing at me at the flap check,” Cap says to Ben.  “Isn’t that how you got bounced out of the Air Force?”

“That senior officer had it coming. You? You’re just annoying.”

When a fire breaks out in the cargo hold, all hell breaks loose, forcing a crash landing in shark infested waters. With only 30 pieces of shark bait… er… I mean survivors, Ben must step up to save lives.

“The way I see it, we have one job to do,” he says heroically. “And that is to get home to see our families. Just gotta hold on.”

“Deep Water,” not to be confused with the 15 other movies, mini-series and TV shows with the same title listed on IMDB, is about as original as its name. Director Renny Harlin, working from a script that somehow took six credited writers (Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause, Damien Power, John Kim and Dan Luo) to put “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Jaws” and “Airport ‘77” into a blender and hit puree, is in pure “been there, done that” mode.

The several minutes of mayhem as the airplane disintegrates is the kind of high-energy action filmmaking you expect from Harlin. People are sucked out of large tears in the plane’s fuselage, chaos reigns as a mile high couple in the bathroom are trapped in flagrante delicto and passengers are killed by flying carry-on luggage and bottles from the bar cart. It’s wild, workmanlike stuff that effectively shows the horror of a midair meltdown.

Ditto with the shark attacks. All shark movies owe a tip of the sailor’s cap to “Jaws,” and “Deep Water” is no different, but the scenes of the hungry CGI sharks are just schlocky and gory enough to make an impression.

Unfortunately, as the plane crashes and the sharks feed, the impact is blunted because the characters come second place to the plane and the sharks. One note characters, or, more accurately, caricatures straight out of “Disaster Movie Big Book of Clichés,” are paraded past the camera, but make little to no emotional impact no matter how loud Harlin cranks up the soundtrack’s manipulative, sappy score. They’re shark food, and little more.

Despite its title, “Deep Water” is tremendously shallow, valuing sharks and spectacle over people.