Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
John Stockwell
Cast :
Paul Walker……….Jared
Jessica Alba……….Sam
Scott Caan……….Bryce
Ashley Scott……….Amanda
Josh Brolin……….Bates
James Frain……….Reyes
For as much slack as Keanu Reeves takes for pumping out awful movies on a near regular basis, the man does have plenty of great movies to break up the amount of sludge that occupies his acting resume. Point Break, The Matrix, Speed and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure all make some of his more unfortunate choices in roles and scripts a distant memory. And an actor that seems to emulate Reeves’ choices in film is Paul Walker, referred to by many as the “blonde Keanu” for both his chiseled good looks and his wooden acting. For as much flack as Reeves gets, he at least has four terrific movies to his credit. Besides The Fast and the Furious, Walker’s resume is a series of misfires and money-losing ventures that repeat themselves nearly every spring, summer and/or fall. The poor man’s “Ted” has another poor choice for a movie with Into the Blue.
Walker stars as Jared, an unemployed scuba diver who dreams of sunken treasure while residing in the Bahamas. Living in a trailer with his girlfriend Sam (Jessica Alba), Jared receives a visit from his old friend Bryce (Scott Caan) and his new girlfriend Amanda (Ashley Scott). Bryce is on vacation, and as an attorney who defends drug kingpins (and their associates) he has access to a spectacular boat on an even more spectacular estate. Spending one glorious day scuba diving, the four discover two important things: a plane filled with cocaine and buried treasure. Avoiding the former and concentrating on the latter, Jared and company wind up in a bad place with bad people over the cocaine. And what starts out with a relatively intriguing plot and potential to rise above the acting pool provided turns into a poorly written, poorly acted and overly long thriller.
One has to feel sorry for the situation John Stockwell must be in. On one hand he gets to direct a big-budgeted thriller with well known stars. On the other, he gets handed a terrible script and the vaunted acting talents of Jessica Alba and Paul Walker. No matter how well of a job Stockwell could do, the ingredients necessary for a great movie are missing substantially. What little intrigue that could’ve been provided with a much tighter and cleaner script is missing, as the plot twists and turns are predictable at best and laughable at worst. What truly is missing, though, would be some acting talent to rise above it.
Too bad Walker and Alba are handed the keys to this clunker. For all the exposure she has had in the past several years (nearly equal to Walker in an eerie way), Alba has demonstrated that being able to fill out a swimsuit is about the only thing she really does well on a consistent basis. She and Walker seem to be engaging in a contest to see who can be worse on a scene by scene basis.
Making matters worse is that the opportunity to at least create intrigue by cutting down on the total screen time is blown by the poor editing job. Running nearly two hours, Into the Blue could’ve used a much more judicious editor. Around 20-30 minutes of the movie is useless and takes away from an already lackluster plot.
