The following is a movie review “The Meg”
by Marc Primo.
Release date: August 10, 2018 (Mexico)
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Language: English
Production companies: Warner Bros., Flagship Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures
Producers: Belle Avery, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Colin Wilson
‘The Meg’ is ‘Jaws’ with pseudoscience in 2018.
Directed by Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”), from a screenplay adapted from Steve Alten’s 1997 book. With Jason Statham in the lead role. Co-produced between Hollywood studios and Chinese-owned production company, featuring a Chinese co-star and Asian setting. Expectations are never good for a movie, especially if being compared to a cult classic like ''Jaws''.
The world’s biggest shark (A living specimen of a prehistoric Megalodon, thought to be extinct) and well an attempt to make an action/comedy.
Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a drunk deep-sea-rescue specialist who, in my opinion, is having fun in Thailand. The script makes an effort to make it seem as if Jonas is still regretting his decision to abandon his friends in the middle of a mission after their vessel was attacked by what Jonas claimed was a giant creature. This course of action leads to him being divorced by his wife (Jessica McNamee) and gain a reputation as a coward.
The ironic twist comes in the form of a request to save his ex and two other scientists from a stranded submarine that has apparently been attacked by a similar creature while exploring a previously unknown section of the ocean: the film poses a theory in which the Mariana trench is not the deepest part of the ocean floor. Instead, it is hidden beneath a thermocline or cloudlike layer of super-chilled water where prehistoric creatures live.
Jonas fulfills his mission to bring back his ex and some of the scientists to the surface — but unbeknownst to them, as they made their way to the surface, they created a temporary path in the cold water through which the monsters followed.
When they get back to the lab, they discover their blunder and decide to pursue and kill it before it can cause harm to the world.
“The Meg” takes way to long to get the action going for an action movie. The expected thrills and chills only begin until a scene where Jonas, wrapped by a thin cable attached to a ship, jumps into the deep blue — throwing logic out with him, no shark cage, no protection — to shoot a tracking device into the fin of the giant shark, something that could have been quickly done from the safety of the boat. Obviously, the shark is annoyed and goes after Jonas turning him into bait at the end of a fishing line.
The rest of the movie is a sequence of increasingly close calls, interrupted with generic insert joke here type of comedy and scenes centering on the awkward romance between Jonas and a female scientist, played by Chinese actress Bingbing Li. Li's role can only be described as a stiff, but we can't blame it on the English dialog since most of the cast suffers from the exact same problem including Statham.
In the end, this movie does what it set out to do, make money. The hype and the clichés make it a popcorn flick. Expecting more from it is only natural since Jason Statham is the lead. Sadly, his charm just wasn't enough. The entire movie felt more like work than play.
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