Bullet Points: Into the Blue
No one who is starting up Into the Blue with any previous knowledge of the film is doing so with the thought that it will be some groundbreaking movie. You might be a Paul Walker fan or a die hard Jessica Alba nut but even their inclusion into this picture will still only get you to push play and won’t guarantee your entertainment. It’s a strange movie, to be honest. The movie sells as some sort of ‘Maxim Magazine Presents an action movie starring attractive people’, but it does try at different times to do something more than just extreme close-ups on bikini bodies. Don’t get me wrong, though, the close-ups are most certainly there, In fact, they were probably my favorite thing about the entire movie.
Synopsis: A group of divers find themselves in deep trouble with a drug lord after they come upon the illicit cargo of a sunken airplane.
- Meet the models: Jared (Paul Walker) and Sam (Jessica Alba) have the type of relationship that just pains you to see. They’re a couple of gorgeous people who are always just all over one another. Hardly a minute goes by on screen where they’re not smooching it up. Even the other characters comment about their constant PDA on multiple occasions. They’re a couple of divers who you might call ‘down on their luck’. Sam actually has a job but Jared is hell-bent on being a treasure finder. Not hell-bent enough, apparently, to take a job working for Bates (Josh Brolin) but enough that he’ll cruise around on his friends boat and try to find some goodies underwater. His buddy Bryce (Scott Caan) shows up with Amanda (Ashley Scott) and they all stumble across two things that people rarely find, let alone in the same sixty feet; a shipwreck and a plane crash.
- The Director: If you’re going to hire a guy to direct a movie that is mostly underwater you may as well hire the guy who just recently did Blue Crush. Throw in a terrible teen trash movie like Crazy/Beautiful and you have your man. You might remember John Stockwell as Cougar from Top Gun but he’s a far more accomplished director than he ever was as an actor. Stockwell definitely knows his way around one of those waterproof cameras at this point and uses his knowledge to stage some really cool shots of Jessica Alba’s bikini bottoms riding up her ass-crack. I know art when I see it.
- Underwater Jared: I’m assuming that I was supposed to feel something for Paul Walker’s character since he is the lead. He quits his job like an asshole by shoving his boss into the water. Then he fails to lock up his outrageously hot girlfriend who is head-over-heels in love with him because he has issues. I didn’t care for how he was written one bit. At no point during the movie, you know the parts where they’re going to clubs and hanging out at the pool drinking, did I ever pity him or his “plight”.
- The rest of ’em: None of the characters were really likeable. Scott Caan is a real douchebag and his girlfriend runs off at her first chance to trade a BJ for some blow. Jessica Alba is the only one with a real moral compass and even she’s too dumb to leave her moronic boyfriend who says one thing and does another. This is the kind of movie that fits into the teen rom/com category more than the action genre for about 85% of it. It’s only at the end that something other than watching people swimming underwater shots finally happens.
- Drug life: The group finds a bunch of drugs that are sealed super tight because there appears to be no water damage. I guess people use planes to fly drugs through that area all the time but I would assume it would be more difficult to hide them in a plane than it would be to store them in a boat. Seems like the radar systems would be much better at finding the plans than some random 30 footer sailing around the sea. Either way, the plane magically crashes, is found, and then becomes the setpiece for much of the rest of the film. It’s mostly a very boring movie. They talk about stuff, go diving around looking for artifacts, then party, and repeat. For as much money as they’re sitting on, they never seem to be in too great of a hurry to collect.
Get out of the water, dry off, and get ready for some Bonus Bullet Points:
- Paul Walker and Scott Caan were in Varsity Blues together and Jessica Alba and Ashley Scott were both in Dark Angel.
- All of these characters can hold their breath for a remarkable amount of time. Especially Paul Walker’s Jared. He probably only takes 10 breaths in the entire movie. I looked it up online and the record for longest underwater breath hold is 22 minutes and 22 seconds. That is much longer than I ever would have guessed. Almost long enough to vacation with my Dad and not have to smell one of his world-famous shits that he used to take. Those puppies lingered for about 35 minutes!
- The sharks totally do all the dirty work.
The Verdict: This my come as no surprise but Into the Blue is not a good movie. None of the characters are worth a nickel and the story is so stupid that I was more interested in finding out how long a person could hold their breath and the different techniques for it that I missed most of the names of the characters in the movie. Josh Brolin adds a little to the movie but he’s used so sparingly that it’s too little, too late by that point. I don’t know who I’d like to punch in the face more, Paul Walker or Scott Caan. They’re both exactly the type of dudes that deserve to be eaten by sharks in this movie. The movie has some cool shots in it. Stockwell knows how to make something look good underwater. I wouldn’t waste your time watching the movie if you haven’t seen it to this point. You’re better off just looking up pictures of Jessica Alba and Ashley Scott in bikinis. Just remember, love is the real treasure. Unless you’ve found some legit treasure. Then make sure you go back there and keep poking around till you find it!
