Into the Blue

John Stockwell – 2005 – USA

100% pure eye candy.  You can barely take your eyes off the film’s outdoor and underwater scenes and yet when it’s over you are thoroughly malnourished.  This could potentially have been some kind of left-field masterpiece if only three-quarters of the plot had been discarded.  Paul Walker and Jessica Alba, (shamelessly vying for the hottest-couple-of-the-year award), live like beatniks in the Bahamas where Walker ekes out a living as a scuba guide and Alba just cavorts around in bikinis and cut-off’s, looking cute-as-can-be.  There is some sunken pirate treasure somewhere in the area, (in shark-infested waters, I might add), and their pipe dream is to someday stumble across it.  I wish this was all that the movie was about, but unfortunately, there is also the thick primary plot involving a cocaine shipment lost in a plane crash, drug smugglers large and small, an unscrupulous rival boat owner, and a smarmy friend and his girlfriend who arrive to screw everything up with their thoughtless greed.  It’s a ton of melodrama for such a short and presumably simple movie.  The photography is stunning, both above and below the water.  Unfortunately, every time the plot kicks in, which is a lot, it’s just one eye-roll-inducing cliché after another while you wish we’d never gotten out of the water.  But at least one or two bad guys get eaten by a shark at the end; that counts for something.