We're going back to get a bigger aren't we

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2005)

What could make a man go out into a hostile environment and fight a monster. This is the very heart of this story. When a rouge shark stakes his territory off the shore of Amity Island, the community responds first with disbelief then shock as the shark repeatedly takes victims.
3 men venture out to catch the shark. Salty sea dog and shark hunter Quint has his own reasons, which I won't reveal here, but are not so dissimilar to that of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. Hooper, a marine scientist has always been fascinated by sharks. Police Chief Brody who is scared of the water who must protect his community and his own family.
Each person is an interesting character, and that is what makes the movie special. Mostly importantly it has the shark, a genuine monster that regularly causes the deaths of people in modern countries. If you have ever even paddled in the ocean you have visited the home of monsters.
This movie is fabulous adaption of Peter Benchley's very famous book. The formula created in this movie for the battle between these men and the beast has been copied endlessly in monster movies since, but never so well.
It genuinely reawakened humans fears of sharks (but shark fear was written about in Jule's Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the sea) and stopped people going to the beach. However, Peter Benchley has since spent much of his life campaigning against his own book for the preservation of sharks. In truth sharks don't often eat people, the usually take a bite, think "yuk" and spit them out again.
It is a movie that should be on everyone's must see list and worth returning to if you are feeling jaded by some of the current monster fests.