Jaws - 1975

 Well, the music is great, tense and intriguing, very important in this kind of movie, but the final product feels its years. Of course it is still an important, good product, but I don’t know how many youngsters would appreciate it nowadays. 

I was a bit disappointed by the nudity at the beginning :/ Such cheap scenes lower the quality of the product, sorry but it’s mostly-never necessary to ‘show’, surely not in a situation like this. 

But I liked the three characters together at the end, to get rid of the shark. The hardened sailor who has fought sharks before, the scientist who has studied everything about sharks, and the man who came to the island to have a peaceful life and doesn’t know anything about boats or sharks other than what he recently read.

Details:

it starts with some kids drinking by the fire at a beach. A girl wants to swimming, it’s a beautiful night, so she undresses to swim naked and something in the water pulls her down. She screams but nobody hears. The boy who was supposed to swim with her fell asleep, drunk. 

The chief of police of Amity Island is called for a missing person case until an officer finds her body. We see a hand and a lot of crabs feasting.

Nothing ever happens in this peaceful place, everyone’s preparing for the 4th of July celebrations. The chief buys himself the stuff to make signs that ban people from the beach.

The town people are not happy, thinking he’s exaggerating and there’s never been a shark problem, and they need the summer tourists’ money. Everyone has access to the beach, lots of people in the water when suddenly there’s blood. Everybody goes out but a kid is missing. His mom says it was a shark.

People still aren’t happy about closing the beaches. Mr Quint offers to hunt and kill the shark for 10.000$. The kid’s mother offered 3.000 for whoever catches the shark that got her child.

Two men try to catch it at night. They come out alive but rather scared. Chief Brody reads a lot about sharks and we see some gruesome pictures in that book.

Matt Hooper from the Oceanographic Institute arrives, they called him in. Lots of people take their boats out in the water to catch it, some with dynamite. They do catch a shark and Brody is as happy as they are, but Hooper takes measures and doesn’t think it’s the same that attacked the girl, so he suggests cutting up the ‘fish’ to see if there are remains. Everyone is satisfied, but Brody and Hooper cut it open that night, and Matt was right, no human remains in there. 

They tell the mayor but he does not agree because there’s no proof and he wants the 4th of July’s tourists the next day.

Lots of people arrive. 

They patrol the water but the beaches are still full. Nobody goes into the water though until the mayor convinces a family to go in. Then everybody goes in.

When there’s a shark alarm, they all panic but it was just two kids playing a prank. Next alarm is not a joke and a man is eaten.

Brody wants the mayor to hire Quint, and he signs. Hooper wants to go with Quint, and Brody goes too. They argue a lot. When Brody sees it up close, he says “you’re going to need a bigger boat”. Then they shoot it with a big yellow barrel attached, so they can follow it. Well, they lose it.

The big men, Quint and Hooper, confront scars, tell big stories, drink and sing.

When it appears again, they keep shooting it, they attach two more barrels, but it’s very big and strong. Even with three barrels attached, it can go down. Now the shark is chasing them.

Crazy Quint puts too much pressure on the engine, so now they have a half-flooded, half-burnt boat.

At this point Quint is willing to try Hooper’s way: they put the shark cage in the water, he wants to inject it with poison. The shark hits the cage and Hooper loses his weapons (really? come on…) The shark breaks the cage, Hooper swims down. The shark starts eating the cage and it eats Quint too. Brody is left alone on a flooded boat and he feeds the shark what I think is an oxygen tank and then he succeeds in shooting it making it explode.

They swim back with the help of two barrels, laughing. The end.

Brody - Roy Scheider

Quint - Robert Shaw

Hooper - Richard Dreyfuss

Ellen Brody - Lorraine Gary

ITA lo squalo