Review: Great White

Seaplane pilot Aaron Jakubenko and American-born wife Katrina Bowden take on a charter from sulky risk analyst Tim Kano and his wife Kimi Tsukakoshi. The plane runs into some trouble and crashes, leaving the foursome and crew member Te Kohe Tuhaka stranded in the middle of the ocean. And hey, is that a shark? Uh-oh…another shark has arrived. Now that’s a helluva thing.

 

Tedious 2021 Australian-lensed shark movie featuring a mixture of mostly American and Kiwi actors, none of whom register much, nor does the shark. Standing out as particularly bad is a typically sullen Tim Kano, by far one of the worst-ever actors from TV’s long-running “Neighbours” playing the grumpy, wimpy complainer of the group. Playing one of the most useless film characters I’ve come across in years, Kano spends the whole time looking like he’s been blackmailed to appear in the film. Admittedly, it’s not too far from how he chooses to play things on “Neighbours” as well. American soap actress Katrina Bowden is probably the best of the lot but fairly bland. The rest are practically invisible and not really worth discussing. Meanwhile, an 80 minute movie needs to move a lot quicker than Aussie director Martin Wilson (whose background is in TV and shorts) trudges this one along. That’s especially the case when Wilson and screenwriter Michael Boughen (the fun Aussie horror film “Dying Breed”) fail to bring anything new or interesting to the table. The film looks nice, but that’s Australian scenery for you. I can’t really add points for the camera crew being able to point and shoot the naturally attractive scenery, can I?

 

Slow, boring, unoriginal, poorly acted, and with characters who are extremely hard to care about. This shark attack film is pretty, but also pretty terrible. I’ve seen films with “Sharknado” in the title that offered more entertainment value than this.

 

Rating: D

 

 

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