A Look At Great White, or “A Pleasant Surprise Among The Reef”

I’ve had the movie Great White sitting on my shelf for almost a year now, and I kept saying that I would eventually get around to watching it. However, like a shattered windshield, I never got around to it. I didn’t think I would have been missing much considering it was just another shark movie sitting alone at Best Buy. But, when I sat down to watch it for this (unprofessional) review, I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It’s still no masterpiece though.

The film follows five people on an excursion to fly over the ocean and visit a national park. However, when a dead body is found, things start to sink. The group try to find the dead man’s boat in hopes of finding his girlfriend, but then it sinks faster when a shark comes into the mix. They now have to paddle to shore on a liferaft, while trying to not become chum. The idea of a person, or group of people, being stranded out at sea with a shark out on the loose isn’t new (see The Shallows or 47 Meters Down). It’s what the filmmakers do with this nearly fished to extinction premise that lets a shark film stand out. Unless you’re Deep Blue Sea. What does the film do? It tries to focus more on the characters. How are the characters?

We have a small main cast to work with here. The core group consists of pilot Charlie (Aaron Jakubenko), his girlfriend Kaz (Katrina Bowden), cook Benny (Te Kohe Tuhaka), and married couple Michelle and Joji (Kimie Tsukakoshi and Tim Kano). They’re not bad characters, but some of them feel…