Requins - L'armée des profondeurs

This is a production from RHI Entertainment, the makers and distributors of a number of awful movies like "Sharpshooter", "Depth Charge", and "Mask Of The Ninja". This should be your first clue as to the quality of this movie. The second clue is that this movie, like those others, was made for television. So there's no foul language, no nudity, no sex, and the presentation of blood and (very limited) gore could easily be showcased on prime time. But even if the movie had any of that juicy stuff, it would still be pretty hard to sit through. The script is awful - it stretches the movie past the breaking point by making the movie last more than two and a half hours. It takes forever for the characters to realize that something strange is going on and that a lot of people are missing, and even longer to find out that it's sharks causing the problems. The movie is also not very well made, with cheap-looking CGI sharks and cinematography that looks somewhat dark even when the movie is outdoors in the sunshine. There is an extremely high body count, and there is a somewhat amusing small subplot about a little girl afraid of the water, but those things are just a couple of drops in a sea of ineptness.

I really enjoyed this one for starters,, John Schneider did a wonderful job with the material that he was given,, i was disappointed in Daryl Hannah though,, i thought that Armand Assante did a great job as the bad guy in the movie, F. Murray Abraham didn't have enough screen time in this.. the plot was great i thought,, here you have a real estate developer trying to basically buy up the whole entire fishing community, although be it very unscroupulus in his ways, dumping illegal toxins into the bay, therefore making all the fish die off , so the community goes basically bankrupt, but in the process the chemicals do something to the sharks and mess up their brain waves, turning them basically from docile,, to manhunters,, and they eventually start to swarm on the community of Full Moon Bay,, i think this was a great TV movie, and i know many of you won't agree with me,, but i just don't care.

I really enjoyed this one for starters,, John Schneider did a wonderful job with the material that he was given,, i was disappointed in Daryl Hannah though,, i thought that Armand Assante did a great job as the bad guy in the movie, F. Murray Abraham didn't have enough screen time in this.. the plot was great i thought,, here you have a real estate developer trying to basically buy up the whole entire fishing community, although be it very unscroupulus in his ways, dumping illegal toxins into the bay, therefore making all the fish die off , so the community goes basically bankrupt, but in the process the chemicals do something to the sharks and mess up their brain waves, turning them basically from docile,, to manhunters,, and they eventually start to swarm on the community of Full Moon Bay,, i think this was a great TV movie, and i know many of you won't agree with me,, but i just don't care.

This movie was a classic "B" - - SciFi type of movie. It has a wonderful cast of really good actors...but in my opinion the plot was anemic, the directing was even more-so...and I loved it! Why? Because the cast each did an excellent job of acting and the setting was believable. One can see from the 'heft' of big stars where the budget most certainly was spent. It most certainly wasn't spent on special effects or, for that matter, screen writing.

All in all, I would not only recommend it because of its positive aspects...but would watch it again and again if the opportunity affords itself. The positives outweigh the negatives.

"Hamilton Lux" (Armand Assante) is a real estate developer who wants to buy all of the homes and business of the small fishing town of Full Moon Bay in order to build condos overlooking the Pacific Ocean. So in order to compel the townsfolk to sell their property to him he has secretly poisoned the nearby coastal waters to kill all of the fish and impoverish the community to such an extent that they will be more than happy to take whatever he offers them. Unfortunately for him, one particular fisherman by the name of "Daniel Wilder" (John Schneider) has no intention of selling out and he happens to own a vital piece of property that Hamilton Lux needs desperately. Even worse is the fact that the particular chemicals used by Hamilton Lux to poison the fish has not only drastically affected the ecological balance but it has also resulted in the sharks hunting in large schools in search of the only food sources now available to them-vacationers enjoying the waters off Full Moon Bay. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that, for a made-for-television film, it wasn't too bad. Although I didn't care for some of the characters, I particularly liked the performance of Amy Zuckerman (as "Heather McComb") and the aforementioned Armand Assante. I also thought the shark footage was okay for the most part as well. In any case, although a bit long I have rated the movie as about average and recommend it to those who enjoy films of this type.