No.108 : The Reef (2010)

The Reef at the IMDb

 You know all those films you’ve seen about a group of sexy youths stranded at sea and who are plagued by a big shark? Well, here’s another one.

A group of four Australian twenty-somethings take off in a fancy boat to have a look at an idyllic island off The Great Barrier Reef. Their slightly older deckhand, who looks like Moxey off ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet’,  does the heavy lifting as the two guys and two girls frolic about on the sand for five minutes. They quickly realise that their boat is in danger of running aground due to the tide but manage to get back on board in a scene that offers no peril whatsoever but a few bikini shots for those so inclined.

They decide to head back but as night falls they are all awakened as the boat capsizes due to the hull being ripped open by the coral reef. They all manage to escape the craft and soon assess their options from the upturned hull - stay with the boat or swim for safety. The leader of the group wants to swim but Moxey who “knows these waters” advises caution. I think he was trying to sound like a wise old sea salt but looked more like he was missing from a German building site.

The four pretty people decide to leave Moxie in the boat with the distress beacon and head off on the ten mile swim with a cut in half boogie board between them. As you’d expect things quickly go wrong as a portentous dead turtle signals trouble ahead. Can you guess what it is yet? Well if you’ve looked at the poster you’ll have gathered the trouble is in the shape of a big fraggin’ shark.

True to form the four youths are slowly whittled down by the shark who is either reading the script or just a bit hungry. Who will survive? Will that woman ever stop screaming and is the boat insured?

This was an OK ‘Based on True Events’ film but I bet my synopsis is longer than the plot pitched to the studio. If you’ve looked at the poster you’d be able to guess almost every event and there is really nothing here to recommend it over the superior ‘Open Water’ or even ‘Open water 2 : Adrift’. The attempts at characterisation were perfunctory at best with one pair a brother and sister with the added baggage of a former pair of lovers reunited for the trip. There were some touching moments of bonding and sacrifice but for the most part you are tapping your watch waiting for the shark to show up.

The five members of the cast were fine but there wasn’t much for them to do apart from scream a lot. The leader, who looks like former Rangers striker Nacho Novo, had the most to do in keeping the group together but the two womens’ scripts must have read ‘Aaaaarrrghhhh!’ for 20 pages.

The shark was well realised and the IMDb states it was a real one. You can see the joins as it bashes through our heroes however and the kills were a bit soft, mostly happening underwater with a change of the water colour the only clue that you are one more body closer to the end.

The film ends somewhat abruptly with a couple of captions serving to end the story and whether this was due to budget constraints or the magic 90 minutes being hit I’ve no idea - I’m not that bothered either way! It was competently made and had enough to have me stay to the conclusion but it was just so familiar and unmemorable that I’ll probably see it again in a year and be unaware I’ve been there before.

THE Tag Line - Don’t Lay Your Hands On a Copy. 45%

No.18 : The Informant! (2009)

The Informant! at the IMDb

You can almost see the scene; the marketing team for this movie have a hard job. It involves complex ideas of bribery and corruption and has no sex scenes or car chases - how can we convince the audience that this is in fact a jaunty comedy worth their seven quid? Yes, I’ve got it - stick an exclamation point on the end of the title, that’ll do it. We can also make the graphics a bit wacky and have a seemingly inappropriate kooky soundtrack - that’ll show them.

I actually quite enjoyed this film, but to call it a comedy would be stretching things and the whole films hangs on a single premise - Matt Damon lies a lot. Damon plays Mark Whitacre a bio-chemist at a chemical plant who has found himself in a corporate role. He develops products from corn and finds himself in a hard spot when a new strain of a chemical fails. He tells his boss that there is sabotage in place and he’s received a demand for $10 million for the name of the mole and the formula to save the new chemical.

Things go smoothly at first when the guy off ‘Quantum Leap’ is assigned to be his FBI handler in their investigation of the extortion attempt. Mark thinks that he’s being set up as the fall guy as he regularly calls Japan, the source of the ransom demands. He decides to become an informant against the company and spills the beans on all their schemes involving global price fixing.

For a while Mark is the hero and gets evidence of secret meetings and deals. Things start to go awry however when his stories start to get a bit far fetched and his own dealings come under scrutiny. Before long egg is on all the faces as Mark is exposed as an inveterate liar and the biggest crook at the table.

With the company and the FBI both looking a bit silly can Mark stay out of jail and keep his ill gotten gains which keep escalating in value as the film progresses?

That quality overview of the film may make it look a bit dry and to be honest it is. The set up is OK and I enjoyed the various companies and agencies all being as incompetent as each other. Matt Damon does a good job with the lying and we genuinely believe his character is a corporate crusader at first before his world of lies gradually unravels about him.

It’s probably all the ‘Bourne’ films on his resume but I wasn’t convinced that the 40 year old Damon was this flabby, balding lair with a bio-chemistry degree and nice taste in ties. He gives good value in the more ridiculous scenes but less so in the ones where he was being earnest and forthright. His get out clause is of course that his character is a liar so any unbelievable stuff was just that character trait bleeding out.

The film does well to maintain your interest through a lot of scenes that are just middle aged men talking around various tables. The running gag that the money embezzled went up every time it was mentioned was quite funny but apart from that there weren’t too many laughs. I did like Mark’s internal monologue which often had no bearing on the matter at hand but came into sharper focus as the lies tumbled down.

Further down the cast list it was nice to see Kurgan off ‘Highlander’ in a tie and Scott Bakula did OK as the hapless FBI agent. Damon’s wife was a bit thinly drawn and we never really got to the heart of her motivations - I guess it was keeping the nice house and that’s it.

The film opens with a caption saying they’ve changed stuff and ends with some others that explain what happened next. Seeing as you don’t know what’s was true and what wasn’t this was pretty pointless but overall I quite enjoyed this tale of lies, greed and more lies.


THE Tag Line : Believe Me It’s Not Bad 66%