DARK TIDE DVD (2012)

SYNOPSIS: Kate (Halle Berry) is a shark expert whose business has been failing since a shark attack killed a fellow diver under her command. Once dubbed "the shark whisperer," Kate is haunted by the memory of the attack and unable to get back into the water. With bills piling up and the bank about to foreclose on Kate's boat, Kate's old flame Jeff (Olivier Martinez) presents her with a lucrative opportunity: lead a t hrill-seeking millionaire businessman on a dangerous shark dive…outside the cage. Battling her self-doubts and fear, Kate accepts the proposal -- and sets a course for the world's deadliest feeding ground: Shark Alley.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Winning the Oscar is no guarantee of a rosy career in Hollywood; just ask Halle Berry, who won the Best Actress award in 2001 for her gutsy fearless performance in ‘Monster’s Ball’ and has since seen her career go into a tailspin. Unfortunately, ‘Dark Tide’ marks yet blemish on her resume – though admittedly the fault is less hers than of director John Stockwell and his writers Amy Sorlie and Ronnie Christensen.

None of the trio refuse to recognise that their material is not the stuff of serious drama, and so right from the beginning, the film already gets off on the wrong footing. A prologue establishes Kate (Berry) as an explorer whose shark-swimming expeditions have earned her the nickname of ‘shark whisperer’; yet one fateful day, she is left traumatised when her fellow diver (Sizwe Msufu) gets killed by a Great White on a dive that she insisted he accompany her on.

A year later, with her tourist boat business on the brink of bankruptcy, she reluctantly accepts an offer by her ex-boyfriend Jeff (Olivier Martinez) to take a rich businessman Brady (Ralph Brown) and his teenage son Luke into the water up close with the sharks. That one voyage turns out to be the subject for a good hour and a half of the film, where Kate’s personal challenge of overcoming her fears takes place against Brady’s insistence on throwing caution to the wind as well as his own communication problems with Luke.

Nothing exciting actually happens, partly because the scenarios are constructed with so little conviction it is almost as if they were inconsequential and partly because the actors look equally nonplussed. If the drama fails, then so does the action. Despite spending a lot of time underwater, most of the close encounters with the sharks are no more than false alarms, so much so that you actually end up caring little even when the next shark comes swimming near a human.

Admittedly, Stockwell does try to avoid cliché by opting for a more realistic approach in shark-human encounters, so rather than have a shark go after any human that it spots in the water, the attacks – as they are meant to be in real life – are kept only to the occasional. But while trying to be better than the next B-grade shark thriller, he offers little in compensation, especially since the human drama is too pedestrian and uninteresting.

Then, to try to end things off on a high, the expedition gets caught in a torrential squall that capsizes the boat and renders the entire crew at the mercy of the Great White in the exact area where Kate’s friend was mauled – but by then, it is honestly too little and too late. It is surprising that, despite the thin material, the acting is more than decent. Berry’s performance is nothing to shout about, but she hits the emotional beats of her character well. Ditto for Martinez and Brown, the latter employing just the right smarmy without overacting.

Pity then that ‘Dark Tide’ drowns in its own self-seriousness, and fails to offer neither compelling drama nor thrills. The only thing it manages to do is to convince you to visit Cape Town one day, the South African location where the movie was shot simply gorgeous to look at. And speaking of gorgeous, there is the subject of Halle Berry’s boobs, which is featured amply on the keyart of the movie – but even that is not enough guilty pleasure to make up for close to two hours of tedium. This Tide isn’t dark – on the contrary, it is simply shallow. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio comes alive during the underwater scenes as well as the climax; other than that, there’s nothing much more it offers via the back speakers. Visuals could definitely be sharper, and the contrast made more distinct especially during the nighttime sequences – including the climax.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Gabriel Chong