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Official Synopsis:
He risked his life to save the most threatened species in the world. As a result of irrational and unchecked human hunting, the world's shark population has decreased an astonishing 90%. In this true-life adventure, biologist and filmmaker Rob Stewart brings us closer to sharks than ever before. Surviving pirate boat rammings, gunboat chases, mafia espionage and battles with corrupt governments, Stewart risks his life to stop the slaughter of sharks and save our oceans and the very earth itself.
Our Take:
“Soda pop machines kill more people than sharks do.”
I sincerely doubt that, but I’m not really going to argue it or check into the facts of it either. That’s just one of the statistics that sound beyond crazy to me in Sharkwater. Maybe it’s because I don’t trust sharks (which is kind of the point of the documentary), but I also didn’t come away from this film feeling any safer around them. I don’t care how cute and cuddly some guy swears they are.
With Sharkwater, I thought I was sitting down to watch a movie with a bunch of pretty pictures from under the sea. It turns out this is more of an awareness piece on the cruelty against sharks (I’ve got to start reading these synopses more thoroughly!) Luckily, it didn’t matter because Sharkwater is an excellently made film with enough eye-opening statistics and beautiful underwater shots to keep everyone happy.
So, the cinematography and the message are both in check for this film but another key component in a documentary kind of left me flat: the narration. The filmmaker at work here does his own narration and it’s heinous. He has no understanding of tone and inflection so everything that he says comes off like an 8th grade student presenting a science project. But it’s weird because this guy is on screen a lot and talking throughout and he always sounds fine there. It’s just once he gets down to writing a narration and trying to “act” it out with his voice that he fails horribly.
Special features include:
* Beneath The Surface Featurette (16 minutes) – A few good snippets in here, but also a lot of reused footage from the film.
* Shark Defense Naval Training Film (11 minutes) – This is awesome. It’s an actual instruction video from 1964. Just remember, Duck and Cover. Just too funny.
When it comes down to it, Sharkwater is a great documentary. It chronicles many myths about sharks (like that sharks are impervious to cancer and thus if you eat their fins you will be impervious to cancer as well) and has so much great footage of sharks being “cute and cuddly” that I think everyone will be able to get past the shoddy narration.
RECOMMENDED!
Overall Picture:
Movie: B+
DVD: B-
- Landen Chase Pelish
Staff Writer
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