Jaws

Running Time: 124 minutes.

Media: DVD.

This was made the year before I was born... And who would have thought that a movie slightly older than the Movie Madman would still shock him enough to still have a fear of open water... I kid you not, it is partially due to Jaws that I hate going into the open water... swimming pools, not too bad; the bathtub, no problem... Bondi Beach, jet-skiing, rubber dinghies... hell no!

On the lighter side of things, Jaws, which has been cited as one of the greatest movies of all time is still a bloody great movie... A fantastic soundtrack (including one very enthusiastic cellist who obviously relished the opportunity to put his abilities to the ultimate test and make themselves immortal!)

So where do we begin? We have the quiet little town of Amity Island, whose police chief Martin Brody becomes involved in a series of not-so-quiet series of shark attacks... He joins forces with Robert Shaw, who plays professional shark hunter Quint, and marine biologist Matthew Hooper, played by a bearded Richard Dreyfuss to hunt down the mammoth of a great white shark that's decided that Amity Island is their idea of a summer smorgasbord... 

I won't give too much of the plot away, as I'm not one for spoilers, but given that there were three sequels made to the original film, which ultimately kinda went in a downhill direction, (and I will prove this statement in later reviews when I can get around to viewing these sequels) that it's safe to say that more shark hijinks are set to be seen as the sequels progress!

Enthusiasts of the book Moby Dick will appreciate some peculiar similarities with respect to Quint and his literary counterpart of Captain Ahab, which pepper themselves throughout the movie. There is also the notable theme of the political imbecile that doesn't want to endanger the town's economic health and so lets things continue to escalate until it's almost too late... I hate these token characters as they are so formulaic that I could solve them for x, the unknown quantity... Well, I can't call it an unknown quantity... in the case of such token political comedy relief characters, it's sheer ignorance and stupidity... this is by no means a fault of the writers, it's something that's essential to carry the storyline through to its inevitable conclusion and when you think about it, if these political characters didn't act the way they did, the story would be cut dramatically short... 

Observe, this is by no means the actual plot, so no spoilers here, folks:

Hero: There's sharks attacking people, we need to close the beaches to stop more people getting killed.

Politician: You're absolutely right, close the beaches, we need to think about the townspeople.

[Hero closes beach, everyone lives, movie ends 75 minutes prematurely ]

Like I said, these political imbecile token characters are a necessary evil, but it is these same characters that make us want to throw a shoe at the TV screen in the vain hope that it will scone the idiot on the head... What can I say? This aside, the effects are fantastic, including the final scene, which I cannot divulge (even though most people will see it coming!), the acting is fairly spot-on for the kind of movie that it is, and it is for this reason I am awarding Jaws 4½ stars...