Jason Statham stars in this ‘hunt the fish’ thriller that is ‘Jaws’ in all but name, but also takes the time to rehash every seafaring cliché that you could point a harpoon at.
We open in the past with Statham in charge of a rescue attempt on a stricken sub. He gets most of the men off but has to close the hatch on the last few when an unknown force starts to attack the sub. He’s haunted by the decision and retreats into a refreshing bottle of Chang beer, in one of the many overt examples of product placement on show.
Nothing will get Statham back in the water, and we head off to a sea exploration lab off the coast of China. Dwight Shrute, who seems to have done well out of the beet business, is coming to inspect his billion dollar investment. He’s come at a good time as the deepest trench of the ocean is about to be explored by one of their submersibles. The diverse crew see lots of nice sea life but are then attacked, and rendered disabled, by a megladon, a prehistoric shark that can grow to 70 feet. With life support for only 18 hours left they may as well start writing the obituaries…unless Jason can be tempted out of his retirement? Well it is his ex-wife that’s in peril and his name’s over the title; so he'd better get packed.
The rescue goes well, apart from the standard sacrifice of a crew member, and all that’s left is to take care of ’The Meg’ before it kills anyone else. They could just leave it alone, but that wouldn’t make for much of a film so they set off with a few schemes, the first several of which are doomed to fail, as you‘d expect.
After catching their prey an even bigger fish appears; with the crew and hardware decimated, how can it be stopped now that its heading to Amity, sorry, some Chinese beach where it‘s bright coloured inflatables day?
I avoided this film when it came out as it looked rubbish. You know what they say about making rash judgements? That’s right, they are often correct. The ingredients were all here - Statham in an obvious cash in monster movie, a genre that makes it hard to be original and a Chinese Co-Production which led to several Chinese characters being shoe horned in for no discernable reason, including a cute wee girl who possibly was an ill-advised passenger on a boat under constant megladon attack.
It really was by the numbers, with the troubled Statham trying to gain redemption whilst struggling with a CGI fish that changed size depending on what was required of it. Shrute should be ashamed of his outing as the billionaire financer who for some reason was getting into the fish exploitation business. He had no arc to speak of and even when he went off piste to avoid the lawsuits he was hardly a malevolent genius or even a misguided do-gooder he was just ‘can you show me the way to the bank?’ throughout.
Statham gave his usual effortless performance playing the same baldy Cockney who inhabits all of his films. He had no journey or emotional range and it looked like he was just waving a harpoon against a green screen until the run time hit the contractually agreed length.
The effects were decent in places but there is only so much that you can do with a big fish chomping on people and boats. There was plenty of gore but that was pretty comic, with the buckets of chum the only realistic blood on show.
If you watch ‘The Meg’ you pretty much get what you deserve. There may have been a message about the environment or over fishing in there, but it was hard to pick it out amongst all the CGI, product placements and cardboard cut-out characters who were designed to keep the demographic and screen time to the backers’ requirements. A cookie cutter film that could have done with a shark bite to the script to jazz things up just a little.
THE Tag Line : MEGa Disappointment - 35%
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