John Stockwell is a fellow who knows his market. He wrote Blue Crush in which the market was guys who wanted to see a character named Kate Bosworth in a bikini all movie long. Yes, this market did include me, I was the key demographic. In Crazy/Beautiful he directed a film geared towards those who wanted to see Kirsten Dunst get semi-naked. He directed Into the Blue and guess what the theme is? You got it, all Alba, all the time. The camera lovingly adores her figure for a solid thirty minutes of the movie.
I’m not going to fault that. If I were a director I’d probably heavily consider directing and writing films for lovely ladies. I can respect it. Unfortunately I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how darn bad the film is. While I commend working with the lovely lady the results aren’t pretty. One final note about John Stockwell, he acted in the awesome made for TV “Billionaire Boys Club” back in 1987 which might have been the exact moment I felt embarrassed for myself while watching alone. This guy has some serious cred for b-movie projects. He’s the real deal.
The story of Into the Blue follows a group of four friends who stumble upon buried treasure and a cocaine plane while diving. While dreaming of fantastic riches they run into some issues. There are sharks and some violence. C’mon, am I telling you something you couldn’t see coming a hundred miles away?
Into the Blue has all the problems you’d expect. Logic problems, length problems, acting problems, plot problems, predictability problems… what I’m getting at is the film has some problems. I’m not sure how you could watch a trailer for this one and assume it’s any great piece of work so people probably won’t be surprised. If you attend this one it’s probably for some flesh and a little gore, and Into the Blue has both. I think this could have been a decent film if it was thirty minutes shorter (but keep the Alba minutes) and a little less predictable.
Paul Walker has taken some flack recently for his acting ability but he does as much as could be expected here. There isn’t much to work with. Alba is Alba, skinny legs and all. Ashley Scott isn’t very good but it’s a one note character and she’s really there so we can see two girls at once in the shot. I did like the shots of the sharks. They seemed realistic as hell, credit deserved there. It just didn’t add up to enough for me to see it as anything other than a few pretty faces and a few pretty shots.
Into the Blue would probably work better as a rental unless you are bound and determined to see the gals work their magic on the big screen.
