Kimble
Rendall (Dir.), “Bait”, Bait Productions/Media Development
Authority/Pictures in Paradise/Blackmagic Design Films, 2012.
There
is little worse in this world than a bad stab at an accent, especially when the
accent is trying to be an Australian one. It’s a tricky manoeuvre. What’s worse
is listening to a bunch of Australians trying to replicate any other accent:
it’s just awful. Before seeing this flick, therefore, be warned that, since
this was a joint Australian/Singaporean production with an eye towards selling
on to the US, this is a hodge-podge of Asian and Australian speakers all trying
desperately to be understood by people of other nationalities - and failing
miserably.
At
one point, after the situation has been set up and all of our cast are taking
stock, one of the actors declares that, after the tsunami, there will most
likely be “effter sharks”. At this point I stopped the film and looked over to
my fellow viewer: we, both of us, are fairly clued-in to the many varieties of
sharks that populate the world’s oceans but neither of us was aware of this
particular species. After some pointless Googling and discussion, we rewound
the film and listened to it again: “there’s bound to be effter sharks”. We
suddenly realised she was trying to say “aftershocks” – from the depths of her
Cronulla twang – in a way that she thought the average Yank would understand.
And that’s a fail, folks. Sheesh!
So
it went: the cast of this movie are all alumni from “Neighbours”, “Water
Rats”, or “Home and Away” with Julian McMahon – he of “Fant4stic”
and “Charmed” – thrown in to grab some serious actor cachet. All of them
drop the ball when it comes to putting on a cod-Yank accent. In fact, the
Singaporean cast members managed to do better at a semi-Aussie twang than the
Aussies did at their Stateside drawl. It’s just awful and distracting.
Then
there’s the plot. I imagine at the pitch meeting for this someone just said,
“you know Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead”, yeah? Well, like that, but it’s
sharks, not zombies!” And that’s about it. A tsunami hits a supermarket in the
Gold Coast of Australia just as two goons are holding the place up and they all
get trapped inside the ruined building while ENORMOUS SHARKS patrol the
half-sunken aisles looking for snacks. Various attempts at escape/signalling
for help are tried and fail until a last desperate push sees everyone – almost
– win free. Applause.
Of
course, some folks don’t live to see the credits and their fates are determined
by the Hollywood Morality Playbook. The hold-up crook who regretted his actions
(and is played by the best-known actor) survives; his bad-to-the-bone buddy
gets chomped. The new boyfriend of the girl who used to live in the town but
moved away after her brother got eaten by another shark, dies while valiantly
attempting rescue, but – hey! – her old boyfriend gets to win her back and
survive. The vapid boyfriend of the airhead girl with the little dog gets
eaten, just because he was forced to choose between saving himself or the
animal: in an increasingly common trope with these films, “the dog survives” is
becoming a mainstay. And of course, the rules-conscious manager of the
supermarket gets horribly devoured too, because – authority figure.
I
remember when this film was first released, there was a lot of promotional
pushing with critics saying it was “not bad” and “pretty good”. I thought at
the time that this might have been an example of the Aussie propensity for
understatement, but it turns out that they were just damning the whole
enterprise with faint praise.
*****
Mohammed
Hesham el-Rashidy (Dir.), “Mako”, Netflix/JL Vision Film, 2021.
This
one was perplexing. This movie is an Arabic Netflix piece, made with finance
from China, and destined, I’m guessing for an Egyptian audience. I was
interested going in, because I thought that this would be one instance where
the damned Hollywood Morality Playbook wouldn’t be running things and that this
absence would bring something fresh to the brand. I was right… but also, I was
completely wrong.
My
assumptions about watching a shark flick are generally along the lines of the
following: people will gather together to get into the water for some
particular purpose that has relevance for them as a group; once there, mayhem
ensues, either as a direct result of unanticipated shark activity, or from a
non-shark vector that is compounded infinitely by the unanticipated presence of
sharks. In this case, the presence of the sharks is almost completely
incidental.
The
fact that this is called “Mako” started my imagination running. Makos
are quick sharks that are known for their ability to jump (this was crucial to
their presence in the first “Deep Blue Sea”). Since this thing is set in
the Red Sea, I did a check of the local species – Tiger Sharks, Bull Sharks,
Hammerhead Sharks… There are Shortfin Mako Sharks but they’re in the
minority. I asked myself “why these particular sharks?” It turns out
that there’s no real reason. Perhaps it was felt that more people have heard of
Makos and that Bull Sharks have been done to death. Whatever – obviously, a
shark is a shark is a shark. They could have gone for the standard Great White
– if you can stick one of these in the Seine in the middle of Paris, then I
guess they can go anywhere – but maybe they just thought the word sounded cool.
Anyway: makos it is.
The
premise is this: a documentary producer is announced as the winner of a
prestigious award and she steps up to accept it before a huge audience. Turns
out, it was her husband who won the gong and she gets humiliated on the
world stage, even falling off the stage at the awards ceremony. Eager to
save face, she demands from her production crew that they come up with a
concept that will erase her shame and win them accolades in future. A newcomer
to the team informs them of a sunken cruise ship in the Red Sea – now picked
over by SCUBA pirates in the year since the tragedy – and says that “an aura of
sadness” hangs over the wreck. Next thing you know, the team is hotfooting it
down to the beach to catch this “aura” on film.
Sketchy
is as sketchy does: as soon as they hit the surf, the team is sprayed with
mutiny and division. The filmmaker and her husband fight about the award
ceremony and who should have done what for whom; one of the team is high on
drugs and turns psychotic; his brother is a coward and panics; another team
member has diabetes and has forgotten to take his meds; there’s a murderous rapist
on board the support boat up on the surface; and finally, the newbie to the
crew has engineered the whole situation in order to return to the place where
her family perished so that she can die alongside them. Given the size and
range of this mess, the sharks are simply there to clean up the splatter. The
makos are simply the punchline to every story arc.
Maybe
all of this – the superabundance of impossibly-groomed fashion-plate actors;
the agonising, the weeping, the wringing of hands and the pointing of accusing
fingers – is par for the course for Egyptian action films. I don’t know. I was
just impressed that the water didn’t turn bubbly during the event due to all of
the soap. What I do know is that it wasn’t for me.
One-and-a-half
tentacled horrors.
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