Howie Nave
Let me just say right off the top no, it’s not another ripoff of 1975’s “Jaws” (although I did think that way when I first saw the trailer). Oh sure there are some parallels taking place in the summer, a huge shark (this one is prehistoric though) and yes, they needed a bigger boat too. That said “The Meg” does stand on its own with the trifecta elements of sarcastic humor, a long standing feud between former friends and of course, a love interest complete with a little girl (played by Shuya Sophia Cai) who at times steals the scenes like most little kids do).
The movie gets right to the action revolving around its lead character, Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) leading a deep-sea rescue party to try and save surviving crew members on a crippled submarine at the bottom of the ocean. No one knows what caused the sub to be damaged in the first place but Jonas has a good idea what happened. The only problem is there are those under his command that don’t believe him especially when he’s accused of leaving some of his own rescue team behind in order to save 11 of the sub’s crew and his own men when he realizes the sub is suddenly getting attacked again and could kill both his crew and those that they just saved. Was the sub being attacked or was Captain Taylor having his own deep depth meltdown?
Fast forward five years and Jonas, now living in Thailand has given up ever going out to sea again remaining only on dry land. The only ‘liquids’ in his life now is the never-ending consumption of beer and no one around from his past who thought he was a little crazy. Meanwhile there’s another deep sea diving operation going on off the sore of China exploring uncharted waters using state-of-the-art submersibles to explore depths in the ocean never explored before all financed by the ego-driven, I-need-to-make-my-billion dollar-investment-back-quickly, Morris (Rainn Wilson). His staff of scientists, deep sea divers includes actors Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Masi Oka, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Ruby Rose and Robert Taylor. What are the odds too that one of his team is Jonas’ ex-wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee) who gets trapped at the bottom of the ocean with two other research scientists? I can see you connecting the dots already. His ex is in one of those deep sea submersibles so who ya gonna call? That’s right, folks! What I wanna know is how Statham was able to stay in such amazing shape supposedly drinking his life away in those five years?
Other than Statham being the main human star we have the main event why people will be seeing this movie: a 70-foot prehistoric shark known as a megalodon. This thing, thought to be extinct is a killing machine and anything that swims in the ocean is just a floating buffet. The Meg (so that’s how they got the name of this movie?) pretty much remained deep down in the ocean until of course man decided to invade his space opening a conduit of sorts allowing these mega-monsters from the past to now feast in the present. Yes, there’s also an environmental overtone to this flick about not disturbing creatures that stayed in their own prehistoric time zone not bothering us! The CGI effects are pretty good and the gore level is pretty low (hence the PG-13 rating) but some might be squeamish during the dismembering of human body parts (mainly arms so no biggie) when ‘Meg’ is on a killing spree. Directed by Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”) and based on Steve Alten’s novel this is by far the best summer fun flick to watch. “The Meg” won’t win any Oscars (maybe some technical nominations) and most critics being all elitists will probably poo-poo the movie but I thought it was a fun romp on the big screen. You’ll probably like it too.
“The Meg” is rated PG-13 (for action/peril, bloody images and some language) with a running time of 114 minutes.
The rating of 3.5 bagels is out of a possible 5 bagels.