Twenty five years on... it's still thrilling movie making !!

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2000)

The first time I saw this film I was around 13 years old and I went to see it along with a group of friends for my birthday. To say it made an impact, is an understatement !! Over a quarter of a century later, this well told tale of a community paralysed with fear, a ferocious great white shark and three very different men on a boat confronting their worst nightmare is still nail biting cinema. Jaws easily rank's as one of the most influential films of the seventies and one of Steven Spielberg's best works ever. The three male leads each play their roles brilliantly...Roy Scheider as the nervy, aquaphobic police chief of Amity....Richard Dreyfuss as the daring and off beat icthyologist drawn to the terrifying great white...and Robert Shaw in excellent form as the violent half mad, shark hunter Quint, teaching both Scheider and Dreyfuss how to be men....and leading them all into a life and death struggle with a more powerful and cunning adversary than he has ever encountered. What makes this movie so memorable is that it operates on so many different levels. It is a boy's own adventure story...it is a psychological thriller...it is a horror story about a unseen predator...it is about facing an unknown environment with terrible consequences. The tightly wound story, the crisp editing, the soundtrack, and even Bruce the mechanical shark plus the frenetic pacing of this movie add up to one of my favourite cinema thrill rides of the last 25 years. Can't wait to own this one on DVD !!!