The Deep (1977)

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nThe Deep (1977)

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nDirector: Peter Yates

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nCast: Nick  Nolte,nJacqueline Bisset, Robert Shaw, Louis Gossett Jr., Elli Wallach

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nAfter Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) helped create what isnnow known as the ‘summer blockbuster’,  suddenly Peter Benchley (the author of Jaws)nwas a hot commodity in Hollywood and whatever he’d written suddenly became thencenter of attention for producers, who jumped on his novels like sharks on anfrenzy. This is how we come upon The Deep (1977), a film that rode on the Jawsnbandwagon for all its worth. The awesomeness that was Spielberg’s Jaws madenpeople think that if it had Peter Benchley’s name on it, it would have thenimpact and the nail biting suspense that Spielberg’s film had. Was this thencase with The Deep? Could Spielberg’s successful style of storytelling benduplicated by the likes of Peter Yates?
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nThe Deep is all about Gail and David, a couple who go tonBermuda for a romantic getaway and a bit of scuba diving; you see they like tonexplore the wreckage of old sunken ships. In their search for underwaternforgotten trinkets, they stumble upon an ampoule of morphine. When they takentheir findings to the local treasure expert, he tells them they’ve found no bigndeal, but in reality, they’ve discovered part of a treasure of more than 90,000nampoules of morphine that sunk with a ship called ‘The Goliath’. The part thatngets everybody’s panties up in a bunch is that this morphine can be sold fornmillions on the black market. Suddenly Gail and David become the target ofnlocal thugs who want them to dive for the rest of the ampoules. Will theynstrike a deal for the dive, or do Gail and David have other plans?
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nMovies that are about treasure hunts comply with certainnelements. We always have good guys looking for the treasure and bad guys afterntheir coat tails, willing to kill to get their hands on the loot. Both groupsnare fueled by greed, fortune and glory. Examples of these types of films arenRomancing the Stone (1984), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1984),nThe Goonies (1985) and The Phantom (1996). These films are also known asnadventure films because searching for the treasure always leads to running fromnsomebody and near death experiences avoiding booby traps, sadly, The Deep doesn’tnoffer us much in the way of excitement or adventure, it’s actually a prettyndull affair. Which is a sad thing because story wise it feels as if the booknhad great potential for an exciting adventure film. I get a feeling that thenproblem comes from the downright boring way in which the story was told, soneven though I’m sure having all the underwater photography was a ‘big deal’nback in the 70’s, it wasn’t enough. The Deep needed to be more kinetic.
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nComposer John Barry did the music for this film and he’snbeen responsible for fantastic music for many wonderful films, but for somenreason, on The Deep the music was kept to a minimum and we’re left with a lotnof silent moments, with no dialog, and no music, which brings excitement levelsndown to almost a complete stop, even during scenes that are meant to benexciting. The film boasts the fact that it was shot mostly underwater, and it’sntrue, most of it was shot in four different oceans and a huge underwater setnand all the actors involved had to take diving lessons. The filmmakers andnactors went through all these troubles to shoot so much of the film underwater yetnall that effort doesn’t seem worth it for me because the resulting film turnednout so boring and uneventful.  Anyways,nyou know your movie is in trouble when the most exciting thing about it is anneel that hides inside of the sunken ship and every now and then pokes its headnout in an attempt to eat somebody. That eel felt like a desperate attempt toninject excitement into a film that doesn’t have much of it.
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nThis is the film that made a star out of Nick Nolte, it wasnhis first starring role. He headlined the film alongside the beautiful JacquelinenBisset who by the way opens the film with scenes of her scuba diving with only ant-shirt on. In these scenes, understandably so, her nipples become the centernof attraction. According to producer Peter Gruber these opening scenes were onenof the reasons why the film ended up becoming, to my surprise, one of the topnmoney makers for Columbia Pictures that year. But let’s be honest, nipplesnaside, what people expected was another Jaws, even the poster for the film makesnyou think it was a sequel to Jaws. I doubt people were impressed by this filmnas much as they were by Jacqueline Bisset’s breasts. To my disappointment hernrole in the film isn’t even that good, she is often times left on the sidelinesnwhile the men go treasure hunting. Most of her scenes involve her waiting,nbored out of her mind while the men are out having their ‘adventure’. Thoughnshe does have one scene where she kicks ass with a harpoon, most of the timenshe’s relegated to the damsel in distress type of female character. Andnspeaking of underdeveloped characters, the film is filled with a great supportingncast like Elli Wallach and Louis Gossett Jr., but man their roles are papernthin! These actors feel wasted here. Robert Shaw, whom we all came to love innhis role as Quint in Jaws (1975) gives the strongest performance in the picture.
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nThe fact that most of the film was shot underwater was thenbig technical achievement with this one, they supposedly made the biggestnunderwater set built to that date. I just wish that after all those efforts thenfilm audiences ended up getting would have been better. Not only that, for suchna simple film, it runs for more than two hours! The Deep goes to show us the differencenthat the right director and the right music can make in a film. I’m not sayingnthat Peter Yates and John Barry are bad within their fields, but a lot of whatnmade Jaws such an amazing piece of cinema is that Spielberg was behind thencameras; Spielberg knows a thing or two about strong characters, performances, suspensenand just pure cinematic entertainment. On The Deep we had Peter Yates directingnand Yates is a director who took a stab at quite a few genres within his repertoire,nwith a couple of good films to his name like Bullit (1968) and Krull (1983), unfortunatelynI get the idea that at the time he made The Deep, he didn’t understand thenimportance of excitement in an adventure film. The results are evident in ThenDeep, one of the dullest treasure hunts in cinematic history.

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