Shark movies have seen a bit of a resurgence in the past couple years with the release of 2016’s “The Shallows” and 2017’s “47 Meters Down.” Now comes the latest in that trend in director Jon Turtletaub’s “The Meg.” Only this time, we have Jason Statham coming to the rescue in an all-out action-packed frenzy of man vs shark.
Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), a former deep sea rescuer and expert, has come out of retirement when he finds out about the threat posed by a massive, thought-to-be-extinct beast known as a Megalodon, the largest shark species to ever swim in our oceans. Now, Jonas and a handful of researchers and divers must band together and prevent this beast from claiming the lives of beach-lovers everywhere.
“The Meg” proved to be a blend of everything I hoped it would be and everything I dreaded. It had plenty of B-movie action set pieces as well as an admirable level of seriousness that made you more invested. However, it also suffers from a multitude of awkward dialogue and relationships between the characters as well as feeling chained-up by its PG-13 rating.
As usual, Jason Statham does a great job at playing Jason Statham and doing Jason Statham-y things. He takes leadership in every action sequence he’s in and provides much of the weight in the movie, given that his character possesses a tragic backstory. With the action sequences, they still provide for enough logic-leaping, physics-defying stunts and sequences that give it the B-movie tone you wanted to see. I also found it admirable that the filmmakers would provide a minor level of seriousness within the story itself, which by nature shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. But in this case, the seriousness doesn’t overpower the absurdity and is in there just enough to keep you at least invested in the film as a whole.
“The Meg” could’ve easily been, give or take, 20 minutes shorter because at one point you really start to feel the run time of the film and it kind of takes away some of the brisk sequences involving the shark. Sadly, much of those 20 minutes hamper the film in other ways, such as an attempt at developing meaningful connections between the actors as well as inserting one or two too many subplots that make the movie heavier than it needed to be, despite the level of seriousness it takes. For instance, there’s an attempt at building a romantic relationship between Jonas and deep sea expert Suyin, played by Li Bingbing, and while she’s perfectly fine in the movie, her romance with Statham feels forced and never blossoms into something genuine and meaningful. On the bright side, the little girl who plays Suyin’s daughter is a charming and funny little addition to the cast.
It’s these moments of bore and meaninglessness where some of the problems begin to surface, whether it’s with the moments of awkward dialogue or poorly directed moments between two characters that don’t add up to anything other than to try to be funny or otherwise. Rainn Wilson, while giving the kind of performance you would like to see in a movie like “The Meg,” is sadly written off as just another bland, non-dimensional villain. The rest of the supporting cast are decent at best and are merely just caricatures of the characters they are playing.
But the real problem I have with the movie is that while it’s still enjoyable, it could’ve been so much more. From beginning to end, you notice a multitude of missed opportunities that could’ve allowed the movie to become more of the bombastic, ludicrous feeding frenzy it was perfectly designed to be. But it’s PG-13 rating acts as chains that restrict the film from stretching its muscles and providing the audience with something much more insane and exhilarating. Given what we’ve seen in the marketing campaign, this movie, especially the ending, should’ve been a massacre. But with the more accessible rating it’s given, any moments of attempted slaughter are avoided, removing much of the “bite” it so rightfully deserves. If it were given a chance to be something more than a PG-13 blockbuster fluff, it would be able to get creative and provide the audience with more thrills and possibly even some really creative death scenes. But again, much of it feels more like fluff and that makes it feel as though the filmmakers had such an incredible opportunity to have fun with the source material and they almost wasted it.
Overall, “The Meg” is a decently enjoyable B-movie creature feature that’ll make any Jason Statham fan happy. But the admittedly enjoyable moments of absurdity still can’t take away the fact that there was a real opportunity for it to be an insane, bombastic feeding frenzy. But instead, all we got was missed opportunity for something real bloody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsLk0NPRFAc&t=1s&w=585