Into the Blue

Into the Blue (Director: John Stockwell)

The multi-faceted Stockwell wrote and directed crazy/beautiful and Blue Crush, and wrote the screenplay for the HBO comedy Breast Men, but what he may still be best known for is playing Cougar in Top Gun. This movie's screenplay comes courtesy of certain hall-of-famer Matt Johnson, who wrote Torque. This is another movie that has been delayed at least a year--some of it probably had to do with MGM being bought out by Sony.

This is the type of movie that should be a hell of a lot more fun. We have a beautiful ocean filled with pretty fish, hot leads, a sunken treasure from a legendary boat, and just enough of a personality clash between main characters to create a conflict for that kind of story. But here, we also have a downed plane filled with drugs, several villains who want it, and a movie that could have been a tight Treasure on the Sierra Madre for the younger crowd turns into an overlong action picture that gets unbelievably violent for PG-13 standards.

Jared (Paul Walker) and his girlfriend Sam (Jessica Alba, in flick #3 of the year) are divers looking for something in the ocean that will jumpstart their life together, and they are tired of working for "the man" in similar jobs. Joined by twitchy Bryce (Scott Caan) and his latest conquest Amanda (alien-hot Ashley Scott, who was in "Dark Angel" with Alba), they set out to find something hidden in the ocean. At first, they find the downed plane filled with drugs, but they also find some artifacts from a mythical ship called the Zephyr, a ship apparently sunk in order for a pirate to make a getaway with his hot French lover. Don't worry, this saying goodbye to tens of millions worth of treasure for a girl becomes a theme...dammit.

Of course, the problem is that they have no money to do what they need to do with the Zephyr. The idea from the evil half of the crew is to take the drugs from the plane and sell them off, which is bad news because it seems like everyone in the area is a drug dealer (including Tyson Beckford) and they know of the missing plane, and this puts the whole operation into more jeopardy. Super drug czar Reyes (James Frain, who played Paul Raines in "24" last season) gives Jared and friends that unrealistic movie deadline of 12 hours to get the entire shipment out of the boat and back into his hands.

That's what I didn't like. This is a story that could have been smaller, and we didn't need to put that ugly drug business in here (so cliche). And like I said, way too violent: If you want to see a shark eat someone's balls, this movie has been waiting for you, for so long, to show you exactly that. Because the adventure of this movie is what was interesting: the legend, the method by which they needed to extract the Zephyr legitimately, which had enough complications, not to mention the incredible dives...

It's important that I discuss Jessica Alba's ass here because it is key into understanding these dives. One thing Stockwell gets so right here, and what the marketing for this movie directed itself towards, was putting Alba's pinup body into a fantasy upside down position that accentuates all of her curves. Fundamentally, everyone wins in these scenarios. But Alba in three movies this year has been an incredible party-pooper. She played the stripper that didn't strip in Sin City, which took a whole lot of steam and emotional arc out of the already weightless film. She played the stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy in Fantastic Four, robbing life out of the already flatlining movie. Now she plays a girl with total integrity, not willing to do the slightest thing wrong, robbing the movie of some allure and needed pirate spirit. Professionally, Alba is probably going to get loads more work because of Sin City and Fantastic Four, the box office of which relied on her as much as The Empire Strikes Back and Batman relied on Billy Dee Williams. Critically, Alba had three chances to show some real acting chops, some daring, and failed miserably.

Overall, you could do worse this year, a lot worse. You might even have a little fun here, but when your money is on the line, I wouldn't go for it.