RED WATER (TV)
(director: Charles Robert Carner; screenwriters: Chris Mack/J.D. Feigelson; cinematographer: Michal Goi; editor: Marc Leif; music: Louis Febre/Dominic Messinger; cast: Lou Diamond Phillips (John Sanders), Kristy Swanson(Dr. Kelli Raymond), Coolio (Ice), Jaimz Woolvett(Jerry Collins), Rob Boltin (Emery Brousard), Langeley Kirkwood (Brett), Tumisho K. Masha (Rick), Dennis Haskins (Captain Dale Landry), Gideon Emery (Gene Bradley), Charles Dumas (Hank), Clive Scott (Grandpa Gautreau), Nicholas Andrews (André Gautreau), Nathalie Boltt (Ms. Savoy); Runtime: 100; MPAA Rating: R; producer: Mitch Engel; Sony; 2003)
“An over-written adventure film that features an on-the-loose man-eating shark that can survive in fresh water.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An over-written adventure film that features an on-the-loose man-eating shark that can survive in fresh water. It’s a shoddy looking low-budget made for TV film. Director Charles Robert Carner (“Judas”/”Breakaway”) to no avail tries to jazz it up by piling on life-and-death scenes to ratchet up the excitement, but things never catch fire, the mechanical shark is not scary, the dialogue is trite, the acting is water-logged and the unpleasant story has little appeal.
The weakly written screenplay by Chris Mack and J.D. Feigelson tell us that in oil rigger talk the term ‘red water’ means an oil well has blown-up. The story is set in South Louisiana, on the Atchafalaya River, where three stories emerge as one. A killer bull shark goes up river and dines on a few people, causing a panic in the bayou communities. After snacking on a wealthy oil man’s daughter, her dad puts up a $100,000 reward on the shark. In the Virgin Islands, the flashy Jamaican drug kingpin Rick (Tumisho K. Masha) sends his volatile rapper gangsta cousin Ice (Coolio) and South African diver henchman Brett (Langeley Kirkwood) to the above named river to search for 3 million dollars in stolen drug money that was buried there by his untrustworthy American drug courier, Jerry (Jaimz Woolvett), who was just released from prison and is forced into joining the search. Also at the same river spot is the former oil driller who after causing a fatal accident is now the owner of a charter fishing boat he is about to lose to the bank for non-payment on his loan, John Sanders (Lou Diamond Phillips). He is hired by his sexy scientist ex-wife Dr. Kelli Raymond to take her and her oil company’s boss’s wormy son, Gene (Gideon Emery), to explore bayou locations to drill for oil in wildlife preserves. Even though he finds this objectionable, his Cajun mate Emery (Rob Boltin) reminds him he desperately needs the money and so he accepts. The paths of the two groups converge when the oil drillers are taken hostage by the thugs, and soon everyone is tormented by the bull shark and trying to survive from each other.
This so-so movie has one scene I immensely enjoyed, whereby the killer shark opens his mouth wide and a giant industrial oil drill on a crane is shoved into its throat.
REVIEWED ON 9/1/2017 GRADE: C+