They'll need a bigger boat

Rating: 9/10 (9 August 2005)

I know it's been said before,but it really does bear the truth:this film is pretty much the granddaddy of "Summer blockbusters". I am not old enough to recall movies or the summer movie season prior to 1975,so I suppose I have to trust the voracity of that contention.
The story's pretty familiar by now: around and about the 4th of July weekend in the New England beach town of Amity,a shark is killing unsuspecting swimmers along the coastline. Enter Sheriff Martin Brody(Roy Scheider),who with his family has freshly relocated from New York. He's not fond of the water and,to his great chagrin,the deaths of two swimmers has him running into unforeseen tension with the grinning,business-obsessed Mayor(Murray Hamilton),who doesn't want to close down the beach on the 4th. When Brody's warnings heed another attack,he is sent to find and kill the shark along with an out-of-town marine biologist(Richard Dreyfuss) and a crusty old sea salt named Quint(Robert Shaw). As per any creature feature,the task is going to prove easier said than done.
Spielberg may've worked his most deft touches here: the amount of horror and tension here are choice,and,as is the case in his movies since(E.T.,War of the Worlds,to a lesser degree Jurassic Park)the creature of doubt is not revealed until well into the film. Off the top of my head,I don't recall if Peter Benchley wrote the screenplay version of his novel,but whoever did was able to keep the script tight and understated,so as to allow for a normal framing to a menacing situation.
Well worth a collection for the cineaste,whether they are into monster/man vs. nature films or not.