← Back to Reviews
in
The Meg, 2018
Jonas (Jason Statham) is a deep-water rescue specialist who is still haunted by a mission that resulted in the death of several of his colleagues. When his ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) becomes trapped in a deep sea trench on a research mission, he is persuaded to come and assist in the rescue. But the deep sea exploration unintentionally releases a prehistoric megalodon into the ocean, and Jonas must work with the research crew to prevent massive bloodshed.
Silly, but mostly in an affable way, this is a passable big shark movie.
I think that this film got a bit of a boost in how I received it because my expectations were pretty low. Maybe the biggest relief is that the cringe humor stays at acceptable levels, and the adorable, slightly precocious child is actually likable.
You know what? I’ll go a step forward and say that I found a surprising proportion of the characters likable, even if they’re saddled with slightly-stupid dialogue at times. Winston Chao as the expedition’s leader, Zhang; Bingbing Li as Zhang’s daughter and love interest for Jonas; and the very precious Shuya Sophia Cai as Zhang’s granddaughter. My experience with Statham vehicles is that the worst ones tend to have weak scripts and just rely on Statham giving a wry smirk to the camera. There’s a bit of wry-camera-smirking here, but not nearly as much as I expected.
When it comes to the titular giant shark, I thought that it looked pretty good. There’s something very funny about how often a creature the size of a large bus is able to sneak up on people. I always struggle a bit with films about “evil” animals, because they are just doing what their instincts tell them to do. And here we have the added bonus that the protagonists are the ones who unleashed the shark in the first place. I was genuinely sad about the idea of them winning by killing the shark, and of course the film isn’t creative enough to do anything but that.
While overall the cast of characters is enjoyable, there are definitely a few duds thrown in there, and the movie doesn’t even have the decency to feed most of them to the meg! There’s enough action and movement to the plot that the film doesn’t quite get weighed down, but at the same time it does feel like it’s about 20-30 minutes longer than it should have been.
Nothing to write home about, but enough shark-related thrills to be worth a watch.
The Meg, 2018
Jonas (Jason Statham) is a deep-water rescue specialist who is still haunted by a mission that resulted in the death of several of his colleagues. When his ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) becomes trapped in a deep sea trench on a research mission, he is persuaded to come and assist in the rescue. But the deep sea exploration unintentionally releases a prehistoric megalodon into the ocean, and Jonas must work with the research crew to prevent massive bloodshed.
Silly, but mostly in an affable way, this is a passable big shark movie.
I think that this film got a bit of a boost in how I received it because my expectations were pretty low. Maybe the biggest relief is that the cringe humor stays at acceptable levels, and the adorable, slightly precocious child is actually likable.
You know what? I’ll go a step forward and say that I found a surprising proportion of the characters likable, even if they’re saddled with slightly-stupid dialogue at times. Winston Chao as the expedition’s leader, Zhang; Bingbing Li as Zhang’s daughter and love interest for Jonas; and the very precious Shuya Sophia Cai as Zhang’s granddaughter. My experience with Statham vehicles is that the worst ones tend to have weak scripts and just rely on Statham giving a wry smirk to the camera. There’s a bit of wry-camera-smirking here, but not nearly as much as I expected.
When it comes to the titular giant shark, I thought that it looked pretty good. There’s something very funny about how often a creature the size of a large bus is able to sneak up on people. I always struggle a bit with films about “evil” animals, because they are just doing what their instincts tell them to do. And here we have the added bonus that the protagonists are the ones who unleashed the shark in the first place. I was genuinely sad about the idea of them winning by killing the shark, and of course the film isn’t creative enough to do anything but that.
While overall the cast of characters is enjoyable, there are definitely a few duds thrown in there, and the movie doesn’t even have the decency to feed most of them to the meg! There’s enough action and movement to the plot that the film doesn’t quite get weighed down, but at the same time it does feel like it’s about 20-30 minutes longer than it should have been.
Nothing to write home about, but enough shark-related thrills to be worth a watch.