Pretty much everything about this movie is stupid. The plot doesn't even begin to make sense. The film is just a grab-bag of cliches strung together with some of the worst dialogue in cinematic history. The lead turns in a thoroughly wooden performance, although in fairness even the best actor would struggle to make anything of the material she's given.
Everyone involved will probably want to take this off their resumes, but none more than Daryl Hannah, a first-rate actress who deserves better than this. She spends a large part of the film looking devastated and clutching a stuffed monkey, and her visible despair at finding herself in this absolute turkey of a movie is perhaps the only convincing or relatable thing in the whole film.
There is nothing here that couldn't be fixed with a better screenplay, one or two original ideas, shrewder casting choices, dialogue that didn't sound as if it had been translated into English from the original Chinese subtitles by a native Polish speaker, and a director who hadn't graduated from the "straight to video" school of filmmaking. As it is, though, it's a hot mess, but not in any enjoyable or interesting way.
1 star for the scenery, and 1 star for the stuffed monkey. I was going to award another star for the reference to "oceanic whitetip sharks", but when the sharks in question finally put in an appearance, they turn out to be blacktip reef sharks. Apparently even the oceanic whitetips wanted nothing to do with this mess.
