Movie Review

Into the Blue (PG-13)

Kit Bowen

Photos| Movie Info

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Hollywood.com Says
Pretty people in skimpy bathing suits swimming around in crystal blue waters, for hunting treasure. and keeping ahead of the bad guys. What more can you ask for? Into the Blue is just dumb fun in the sun.

Story
We meet our lovers in the Bahamas. Jared (Paul Walker) is a dive bum looking for his big break. Samantha (Jessica Alba), Jared's devoted girlfriend, is happy handling sharks at the Atlantis resort and living with her man in a trailer on an idyllic beach. Wouldn't we all? Except maybe the shark part. When Jared's best bud Bryce (Scott Caan) shows up with a new girlfriend, Amanda (Ashley Scott), things get a little dicey. It starts off when the four divers discover a legendary shipwreck rumored to contain millions in gold. Soon visions of wealth and greed are swimming in their heads. But also nearby on the ocean floor is a sunken plane full of cocaine. Uh-oh. The friends make a pact to keep quiet about both discoveries so they can excavate the shipwreck and claim it before a rival treasure hunter, Bates (Josh Brolin), can beat them to it. Of course, their plan goes awry, as plans are wont to do. The nefarious smugglers, looking for their underwater stash, are lurking about. So Bryce and Amanda come up with a new plan of their own. You know nothing good is going to come of this.

Acting
Into the Blue is a perfect vehicle for its four lead hotties, especially Walker. He's at best when he doesn't have to say too much and can just stand there looking buff and beautiful. At least Walker has played it pretty smart with his career up to this point. He's so far resisted trying on an accent and doing a period drama, content being the pretty boy who makes action movies such as The Fast and the Furious and its sequel. And that's just fine by us. As his sultry paramour, Alba--who's having quite a year with Sin City and Fantastic Four under her belt--isn't required to do much either but look stunning in her scantily clad wardrobe. She'll no doubt be the reason most of the male population will flock to see this. But when it comes down to protecting herself from the bad guys, she can also wield a pretty mean machete. Her Sam has got a lot of guts, evoking images of her character in the ill-fated TV show Dark Angel. Rounding out the cast is Scott (Alba's Dark Angel co-star) as the lanky Amanda, a squirrelly girl with her own agenda, and Caan as the snarky Bryce. The Ocean's Eleven actor is great at playing the hothead you want to slap for being so clueless but who grows on you nonetheless.

Direction
Into the Blue tells us that there is $6 billion worth of buried treasure in the world's oceans just waiting to be discovered, with a major portion of it buried near the Bahamian islands. If that isn't enough incentive to just chuck everything, go live in the Bahamas and be a treasure hunter, then feasting your eyes on the scenery in this movie just might do the trick. After helming Blue Crush in lush Hawaii, director John Stockwell--who's definitely a sucker for surf and sand, as well as the word "blue" in the title of his films--gets his feet wet again in Into the Blue. Really wet. Shooting a film in which three-quarters of it is underwater was an arduous task, especially on the actors who all had learn how to free dive, which is snorkeling in deep water for extended periods of time. But much like its obvious inspiration, The Deep, Into the Blue is really all fluff without much substance. It's just a giant excuse to watch beautiful people frolicking in beautiful backdrops with sharks, drug dealers and action sequences thrown in for good measure. And, you know, that really isn't such a bad thing.

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Everyone's a Critic

"Walker, sporting a burr haircut, is terminally awkward and unexciting; Alba does better, but she's fairly scarce in the story and her romantic scenes with Walker have the sparkle of a day-old Dr. Pepper."
William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"It is a well-made example in a genre that has been cheapened and made routine."
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Riddled with plot holes that might have been bitten out of the script by Jaws himself, Into the Blue stakes a claim to being the worst seagoing adventure since Waterworld."
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"It's a cross between a bad episode of Miami Vice and Pirates of the Caribbean -- the creaky Disneyland ride, not the cool Johnny Depp movie."
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

"Blue has quality underwater photography but its plot implodes, becoming a mess of hungry sharks, sunken pirate treasure, misplaced cocaine, severed limbs and bubbles."
Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution