In the deep azure sea, a whorl of blood spins and dissipates in less time than it takes for a de-finned shark to vanish from sight in a death-dive to the ocean floor. It’s a haunting, queasy moment and, frankly, speaks loud enough without director Rob Stewart’s self-indulgent, monotone narration.
Stewart’s pet project, his new film Sharkwater, aims to wash away the Jaws-fuelled misperceptions of endangered sharks, making a compelling and urgent case for their protection. However, the film is frustrated by the director’s showboating as he spins yarn after yarn about his personal exploits.
But before tedium takes over, Sharkwater is a real-life thriller-a race to expose the dubious interests of the Taiwanese mafia in Costa Rica.
It seems that shark fins constitute a multi-billion dollar industry over there, and that’s bait enough to tempt the Costa Rican government to overlook its poaching laws. Huge numbers of helpless sharks are dragged out of the water, their fins chopped off, and then dumped back in, unable to swim and bleeding to death.
Where Stewart could have kept his distance and let the film speak for itself, he weakens his case by with overzealous assertions of sharks’ beauty and environmental importance. Why does he feel that we need his personal testimony to convince us? Shouldn’t the straight facts, and the grotesque footage, be convincing enough? For that matter, why are we seeing more of him than the sharks?
FILM review
Sharkwater
Directed by Rob Stewart
Starring a bunch of Sharks, Rob Stewart
Rating: VVV / VVVVV
This is a recurring stumbling block as the film progresses. Stewart’s narration is about as animated as algae-few things could be further, or more distracting, from the breathtaking underwater vistas and the silent majesty of the deep. Emphasis on silent.
Ranked as one of Canada’s top 10 films of 2006 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, Sharkwater boasts glorious HD underwater cinematography that brilliantly conveys the serenity of these underwater predators and undermines the unfounded notion that sharks are man-eating killing machines. Stewart actually wrestles with some sharks for fun-a much better contribution to the film than most of his bland commentary.
