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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Information Exchange  |  Movie Reviews  |  INTO THE BLUE (2005) « previous next »
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Author Topic: INTO THE BLUE (2005)  (Read 4501 times)
ulthar
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« on: May 21, 2007, 12:27:14 AM »

[SPOILERS] (as if you care for this piece of dreck)

INTO THE BLUE (2005), PG-13
Director: John Stockwell
Writer: Matt Johnson

Characters:

Jared: Paul Walker, beach/dive bum in Bahamas who has his sights set on becoming a treasure hunter
Sam: Jessica Alba, Jared's love, shark expert at local tourist resort
Bryce: Scott Caan, Jared's friend (or brother), mainland US based drug lord defense attorney (yeah, I buy this guy is a master defense lawyer), acts about 12
Amanda: Ashley Scott, Bryce's girlfriend of several hours; the others inexplicably repeatedly trust her; bitten by shark and later died
Bates: Josh Brolin, Jared's former employer and rival salvor; very successful with all the nice gadgets on his boat; blown up underwater
Primo: Local bar owner, in with the local drug lords; shot, but I don't really know why
Roy: Cop and close personal friend of Sam and Jared, turns out he has divided loyalties; shot for not being loyal enough to Bates
Reyes: Local Drug Lord, shot
Bates' crew: psychopathic bunch, mostly destroyed by Sam, Jared and maybe Bryce in obscure underwater footage that may have involved sharks or spear guns



INTO THE BLUE is rated PG-13, which I found very strange since it was obviously written for 12 year old boys, and maybe BY a 12 year old boy.

The plot opens, like TREASURE OF THE YANKEE ZEPHYR, with a plane crash.  We don't know what the plane is carrying, but we guess it's something important to the story.  Queue underwater footage of the plane sitting on the ocean floor (in about 20 feet of water).  It sure did not bust up much on impact.

Jared is a dive guide who gets himself fired from his job so he can devote full time to convincing his girlfriend Sam his dream is real, dangit, and he's gonna make it happen.  She's a real pro; from a shark pool, she tells us not to worry, nurse sharks don't really bite.  With that little bit of character development out of the way, and after seeing just how much Sam and Jared love each other, Bates stops by to show off his big boat, invite Jared to come back to work for him and to be ogled by Sam.  I REALLY thought we were going to see some Sam-Bates backstory or potential romantic triangle down the road, but it never happened.  It MIGHT have made the first hour more interesting.  Probably not.

Jared and Sam then pick up Bryce and Amanda at the airport.  Bryce and Jared tap knuckles and wrestle each other to the ground, just like most grown men, right there in the airport.  No one even bats an eye, so I guess this is the usual greeting in the Bahamas.  There is a lot of male-bonding lingo thrown about, Bro, as we see just how tight their relationship is.  Queue tight two-shot of the rear ends of Amanda and Sam walking across the parking lot.

Bryce and Amanda are staying at a VERY nice house, complete with all the right toys.  Bryce defends drug traffickers and money launderers stateside, and one of his clients has graciously offered to let him use the place as partial payment.  So our two couples head out for a day of fun jet skiing and riding on the motorboat and free diving.  We gotta have swimming so we can see Sam and Amanda in bathing suits.  Hilarity ensues as Jared and Bryce engage in underwater knuckle knocking and wrestling which causes Jared to lose his watch.  He free dives to the ocean floor to get it, and finds a rock.

But, it's no ordinary rock - it's part of a shipwreck.  More free diving by Jared, who can hold his breath for about 8 minutes at a time, reveals some treasure - but what is the ship? (Jared never finds his watch, but he's wearing it later).  They cannot lay salvage claim to the find until they id the ship.  Pulling some story out of his a$$, Jared figures out the ship is the Zephyr (hmmmm, that name rings a bell for some reason) and it should be loaded for bear with millions (that's 19th century dollars) in gold.  But they cannot properly salvage the site without proper equipment.

Jared goes to borrow some equipment assuming Bryce has the money.  Alas, Bryce does NOT have the money (some gobbledegook about gambling, loan sharks and what-not, you know, like most criminal defense lawyers), but in the next scene, we see them with all kinds of neato salvage toys.  Rocking and rolling to dig this baby up and find out who she is, Jared discovers a perfectly uncovered, very nearly intact DC-3 just sitting on the ocean floor (again, for emphasis, in 20 feet of water).  Our intrepid explorers explore the plane and find it loaded with bricks of cocaine.  And dead bodies.

Here we have another attempt at character development.  Bryce and Amanda want the drugs, either to party with or to sell, and Jared and Sam don't.  It'd be wrong.  Sam wants to go to the cops and all Jared cares about is the ship and the treasure.  So, they agree to keep working the ship until they can ID her and PROVE she is the Zephyr, then they'll go to the cops about the plane.

Somewhere in here we have the insanely stupid and annoying bar/rave scene.  None of the beach bums I've been friends with hung out in 'dance clubs' at night.  Anyway, all of this was done to set up tension between Primo and Bryce.

We also have here some stupid scene to introduce Roy.  The heros leave Amanda on the boat, and while Sam, Bryce and Jared dive the wreck, the cops show up.  They begin questioning Amanda.  The water is crystal clear, yet these cops cannot see the bright colored lift bags being used to raise a long gun from the "ocean floor," but I digress.  The cops find some unaccounted for drugs (gotta be careful when using a Drug Lord's boat for an afternoon of treasure hunting).  After rescuing Bryce, who had a two ton long gun dropped on his arm, Sam and Jared climb aboard, give hugs to Roy and ask about his kids. The cops leave.  I guess those drugs were not that big of a deal after all.  Don't worry abour Bryce, either, nothing wrong with his arm.

Yet another annoying scene somewhere in here involves two goons attacking our protagonist's boat.  Jared and Bryce fight them, and of course they win.  My favorite part of this fight sequence was when one of our hero's clocks the bad guys across the face with a dive tank - and I mean a full swing and solid contact.  I think this may have killed him. After he and his buddy were fleeing on their boat, he said to Bad Guy #2, "I think he broke my jaw."  You know, sometimes a sequence just fits.

Okay, so that's basically the first hour.  To recap, I don't care about ANY of the characters at all, the dialog is what a 12 year old boy would write, the framing of Alba and Scott in bathing suits is what a 12 year old boy would shoot and the plot development sucks shark feces.  But, then we have some action.  Finally.  Real action movie action with plot twists.  Well, sort of.

Bryce convinces Jared to sell some of the dope from the plane to finance the salvage job and Amanda, who talked to Primo all of 30 seconds in the bar that night, figures he would be the one to talk to help do the deal.  Now, Bryce had all these drug connections back in the States and why he did not broker something that way I'll never understand, but Matt Johnson IS a WGA writer so I guess he knows best.  Anyway, this turns out to be a bad move, since Primo takes them to Reyes who wants the drugs from his plane back.  Small world, eh?  Reyes is such a bad dude, he gives them 12 hours to get his 800 keys of coke - THEN LETS ALL THREE (Jared, Bryce and Amanda) go.  Why on EARTH would he not keep a hostage?  Oh yeah, Matt Johnson, WGA, big bucks.  I get it.

Sam and Jared have a big fight over this, so she splits.  While the others dive the wreck, this time proving it is the Zephyr (and half heartedly recovering Reyes' drugs), Amanda gets bitten by a shark.  Jared loses both the drugs and the proof of the Zephyr to rush her to the hospital.  She does not make it, which brings Sam and Jared back together.  Somewhere in here we get a car chase scene that also involves our hero, Jared, doing a hit and run. Jared gives himself up to Primo to allow Bryce and Sam escape.

Primo takes Jared back to Reyes' boat where things are not as they should be.  Primo gets shot in the head, and we learn Reyes and all of his crew are also dead.  Jared says "Hi" to Bates and once again, there is some fuss about where is the plane.  Jared uses his only bargaining chip, the Zephyr, which Bates does not believe. Jared escapes.  Queue repeated footage of boat throttles being pushed to the stops as Bates' crew search for Jared.

Meanwhile, Sam goes to Roy, her cop friend.  He takes her to Bates, of course.  Bates now uses HIS bargaining chip, which he CAN prove, to get Jared to show him where the plane is.  Bates shoots Roy basically for not noticing the plane when he boarded them earlier.  It's not like explaining the disappearance of a cop is that hard, right?

Jared and Bryce plan an ambush at the plane for Bates before Jared goes to meet with Bates. Sam is left alone handcuffed to Roy's body in the ENGINE ROOM (never find tools there) while Bates, Jared and some other crew dive to the plane.  She gets lose (I'll let you guess how, it's pretty deep for that 12 year old boy running the plot) and gets into a running fight with one of the meanest of Bates' crew.  At one point, she slams his hand in a hatch and dogs the thing down and he gets loose and continues to fight her.  She gaffs him and beats him, and he continues to fight her.  I mean Jason could learn a thing or two from this guy.  Ultimately, they end up in the water and he gets bitten by a shark.  She doesn't.  I guess the shark knows her or something.

Bryce, Jared, Bates and the crew get into it in the plane.  There's a whole lotta spear gun shootin goin on down there.  At least one crew got bitten by a shark (see a theme?) after getting speared in the face.  Proving that he's as indestructable as the dude on Bates' crew, the one fighting Sam, Bryce gets speared in the gut but he's okay to keep on fighting. Or going to the surface.  Or something.  This leaves Jared and Bates below to duke it out, and Jared knocks the valve off a dive tank.  It propels toward Bates, hits some sort of box and explodes, supposedly killing Bates.  Um, when I say explodes, I mean with a fireball like a hollywood car crash explosion.  I'm not sure WHAT exploded like that - it seemed to be up near the cockpit.  Maybe they used nitroglycerine in their dive tanks to get to the awesome depth of 20 feet.

The final sequence shows Bryce, Sam and Jared on a pretty darn nice salvage boat doing operations on the Zephyr.  Where did they get the money?  So what if it's six months later.  Anyway, they drop a long gun (again!) and Bryce finds the big treasure.  Good, I love happy endings.
Logged

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Hathaway:  I noticed you stopped stuttering.
Bodie:      I've been giving myself shock treatments.
Professor Hathaway: Up the voltage.

--Real Genius
dean
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« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2007, 03:15:31 AM »

Nice review.


This film was made purely to get Paul Walker and Jessica Alba in as little clothes as possible and as wet as possible.  The makings of a true blockbuster in any producer's eyes.

We actually had the Blu-ray version of this at work for two weeks to display our new fancy schmancy 1080p Pioneer Plasma, and I have to say it looked fantastic.  Luckily for me we displayed this with the sound off, so I suppose I got the best I could out of the film: I knew the plot, what happened, and how it ended all without having to listen to terrible dialogue, and I'm sure, numerous amounts of Paul Walker saying 'bro'.

So in sum, pretty pictures, scenery and Jessica Alba in bikini=good enough for me.

Though I must say, I was saying to one of the guys at work saying "this film is just for all the 13 year old boys who want to see some Jessica Alba skin, and you know what, that's fine by me' to which he asked, quite innocently, 'which one is Jessica Alba?'

Not long after that, one of the guys asked me what an emo was...  I really do wonder about my co-workers sometimes...
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