That’s right folks.
You didn’t read the title wrong and you’re not drunk but you’re gonna wish you were when this is over. I found this little gem at my local CEX shop sitting there nestled between Shawshank Redemption and Sucker Punch. Right from the get go this one is going to hurt me in ways only the Asylum can hurt me. The cover is one of the 1000s of Jaws rip offs out there with a god awful tagline that only made me laugh in the store.
Ok enough stalling let’s dive right into this mess.
The movie opens with radar that I assume is tracking something when the music swells like its announcing the arrival of the Emperor into Rome. Seriously what is up with the high pitched fan fare and choir singers? Well now we get our title and it’s nothing special at all. Here’s where my blood runs cold and it has nothing to do with sharks. Stephen Baldwin is the main hero of this flick. Just let that piece of information sink in. The man who was the other half of that rage inducing horror fest Bio Dome is going to be our hero. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
As the credits play with the ever increasing in volume music we see a diver navigating his way through the waterways of Venice. So now we see three divers in total going through a tunnel beneath Venice and one of them speaks. I wouldn’t mind so much except all three have a breathing apparatus stuffed into their mouths. Unless the leader is telepathic that’s pretty damn impossible. So with an angry Italian man named Clemenza sitting in a very expensive boat above them the trio continue on trying to find a passageway. They find a plague bearing a warning left behind by the Medici family and it’s here we get out first shark attack.
And there lies the MAJOR problem of the movie. How the name of all that’s holy can sharks survive in the Venetian waterways? I’m pretty sure the water there would kill them never mind the fact they somehow they got into Venice without anyone seeing them. We’ll come back to this later, trust me.
So the trio of treasure seekers become shark chow as Clemenza storms off in a rage when his subordinate informs him that they are all dead. Well, did the horrific screaming give that away or was it the image of a shark’s mouth coming at them on your screen?
Anyway we’re taken to the Oceanographic Institute at San Francisco where we meet Stephen Baldwin playing a character called David. I’m supposed to believe that this man is a respected professor in the field of oceanographic research. I’d have a better time believe that a Rancor can perform Swan Lake. Baldwin brings up the fact that when exploring underwater wrecks like the Doira which he is showing to the class of students fighting off sleep violent changes can occur that can result in divers losing their lives. He follows this up by saying that if the weather doesn’t get you then the sharks will. Right, so there are no other predators or dangerous aquatic life near ship wrecks that they have to look out for? On top of that he’s playing footage from what looks like a Discovery documentary.
So we learn that the three divers at the start were his dad and two colleagues. Apparently they were killed by a propeller. Sound familiar?
Dammit, 9 minutes in and we’re already in Jaws territory. David wants to head to Venice and he’s joined by his fiancée Laura who looks like she just hit puberty. Ok, that’s a scary thought and I’m stopping it right now. They head to Venice and meet up with a detective named Sophia who wants David to identify his father’s body. After pulling the sheets away and giving us literally a flash of red he intones that this is not his father but the men weren’t killed by a boat.
Now if I were a detective and someone told me that a diver was torn apart by a shark in the waterways of Venice I’d ask them to lay off the pills. But no one bats an eye when he says this making me wonder if the writers of this garbage did basic research on sharks. The only one to voice this would be the chief of police to which David asks why everyone is against the idea that a shark killed the divers.
Does this guy even hear what he is saying? He’s a supposed professor in this field and I thought his reaction would be one of disbelief rather than simple acceptance. Bloody hell I need a drink and we’re only 15 minutes in. Pray for my soul.
David heads to his father’s apartment only to find the place ransacked and it’s at this moment I realised David’s facial expression has not changed. NOT AT ALL. He had the same expression when informed on his father’s supposed death, when he saw the bodies and is now standing in the remains of the apartment. For god’s sake he had more emotions in Bio Dome! Did a Botox job go horrible wrong and freeze all facial muscles permanently?
David finds a case hidden by his father and pulls a diary out of a plastic packet. Now we get to see where the money for this film went to with a flashback sequence to Crete 1270 AD. And no it’s still bloody awful. We get knights fighting and massacring innocent people while the choir is trying to make this scene feel epic. It does not work. Apparently three knights from the Medici family found King Solomon’s treasure and used Marco Polo’s fleet to bring the treasure back to Venice and SOMEONE PLEASE KILL THE BLOODY CHOIR!!! Finally it ends and with a map left with the diary the trio of morons take a boat to the location marked on the map. David and another diver take the same route the divers at the start of the movie took and we also get documentary shots of a shark swimming nearby.
And for some reason they can speak even with a breathing apparatus stuck in their mouths…what the hell? For the love of god you can’t speak with something jammed into your mouth! I wore the same equipment when I went diving a few years back and the only sounds I could make were…oh wait, I didn’t make any sounds because I was too bust breathing! Grr, this is just pissing me off so let’s move on. David and Other Guy find the same plague along with a watch worn by David’s father and Other Guy becomes Dead Meat when the shark attacks. David finds the remains and is able to deduce the shark that killed the diver just by doing a quick glance over. It’s a Great White of course.
This is too rich. The shark bites down on his arm and begins shaking him violently but just when I thought Baldwin was history he gets away. Somehow David escapes and swims to an underground chamber and his arm is still attached to his body. I literally had to stop the movie because I was laughing so hard. This is just complete bullshit. Even if he got the shark to let go his arm would be in shreds by now, barely hanging on and blood pumping out fast enough to kill him in minutes. Looking at him now you’d swear blind his cat scratched him. Sharks use their teeth to saw through the meat and bone of the animal they are eating so why he hasn’t lost his arm is really beyond me at this point. God I can feel my brain cells frazzle up.
Moving on David begins to explore the chamber and at this point I’m praying for some skeletons to come back to life and turn this waste of skin into sushi. Dear lord the scenes were he’s exploring the chamber reminds me of Raiders of the Lost Ark…I wish I were watching that right now. So by sheer luck David finds the treasure of Medici protected by some of the stupidest traps I’ve ever seen. The traps in the first Tomb Raider game were far more threatening than this. He goes back into the water when the sharks drawn by the blood proceed to tear him to pieces. Cue the angels singing we’re finally free of him!
No…no, it was just a dream. He fainted in the water and floated to the surface without the sharks coming for him even though HE WAS BLEEDING OUT. Can this movie possible get any stupider? He wakes up two days later in a hospital, his arm completely healed when two shady men approach him with an offer of dinner from their employer. The man they meet is the same guy from the start and he wants David to find the treasure in return for $2 million. David and Laura tell him to stuff it and leave. After 40 minutes the populace of Venice become aware of the sharks when they start killing people in comically over the top CGI scenes. So it turns out telling a Mafia boss to stuff it wasn’t a good idea when Laura is kidnapped by Clemenza’s goons leaving David no choice but to go to the police for help.
The stock footage of sharks start to kill more people resulting in a news report stating that people have gone missing. At least dozens of people saw the sharks kill those people but that never made it into the news. I’m pretty sure at least one person would have uploaded a video of the attack onto the Internet via their phone or camera. The suspension of disbelief is only getting worse and I’m nearly at the hour mark. More black clad goons show up to take David but he escapes somehow and runs into the streets. We have the generic good guy being chased all over the place making me long for Raiders again. If I envision the chase scene through the Cairo marketplace then I think I’ll survive this. One of the goons corners David and a fight breaks out with David beating the guy until he tells him where Laura is. Take it from me when I saw that fight scene was nothing to write about. David gets to the boat but it’s a trap (what a shock) and he’s taken to Clemenza.
Now we finally hear the explanation about the sharks and my god is it one for the books. Clemenza couldn’t risk having divers find the treasure so he smuggled in baby sharks and released them into the canal. When they grew up they couldn’t find a way out of the city and made Venice their hunting ground. I can’t begin to describe how wrong that this. First of all how the hell did he find baby sharks to begin with? Men and women trained in oceanographic research have tried to figure out where sharks go to have their young but this sad reject from The Godfather manages to find at least ten baby sharks? Next how did he smuggle them into Venice without someone saying anything? They’re just swimming around in small glass tanks in a warehouse. How did he even get them into those tanks? God so many questions…
The cop Sophia turns out to be working for the Mafia and she has Laura captive forcing David to go back into the water to find the treasure. He and another goon find the chamber and David takes off his wetsuit for some reason. Upon finding the main treasure chamber the goon is ordered to kill David leading to another fight. How is it so hard for a trained Mafia killer to kill a single ocean researcher? I’ve seen no evidence that David knows how to fight properly. At least in the Indiana Jones movies and Tomb Raider games both main characters learned how to fight and protect themselves in situations like that. I don’t believe for one second that a cheap poor man’s Matt Hooper knock-off could win in a one on one fight with a Mafia killer. That and Baldwin is just so terrible in this movie. He is just so god awfully terrible that I want him to be eaten by the sharks.
After blowing up the treasure chamber David makes it back to the warehouse without the use of a breathing apparatus where Clemenza threatens to kill Laura unless David gives up the chamber’s location. Sophia decides that the Mafia boss has gone too far (gee, the Mafia killing people to get what they want?) and she helps free David and Laura resulting in a gun fight breaking out. Trust me this gun fight is so boring. At this point in the movie I really don’t give a shit about anyone. I would be a happy woman if they all just shot each other. David and Clemenza are fighting underwater with none of the sharks coming for them. Now isn’t that just convenient? This fight seems to last forever with neither man coming up for air. It just will not end!
Finally the sharks get a clue and head towards the two with only Clemenza being dragged away for the afternoon feeding. Why the fuck wasn’t Baldwin taken too? There is not a logical explanation for that. Fuck me I wanted this son of a bitch to die so badly. Anyway the movie comes to a close with the police arresting the goons, David never once changing his facial expression, Sophia’s career in ruins because of her mafia deals and David giving Laura a necklace from the Medici treasure. All her bluster about the treasure being not worth it? It totally is if she gets a necklace to go with her wedding dress despite all the people who died. What a bitch.
And during the end credits a scene plays where a Great White attacks a boat full of tourists.
So that was Shark in Venice.
If you ever get the urge to check this out you may want to keep a copy of Jaws or Raiders of the Lost Ark handy to watch right after.
And on that note I’m off to watch The Last Crusade to erase the memory of this shit storm of a movie from my mind.
Peace out.
Ok, now that the blog is up and running the first review will be coming very soon. I won’t tell you what until the actual blog is up but it has something to do with sharks so that should narrow your search down to about 1000 movies. But this one has gotta be one of the worst offenders of the shark film genre and I rue the day I paid 75p for this piece of crap. I’ll be back soon with the actual review.
Peace out.
Firebucket Reviews 