Much-lauded classic (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2003)

An excellent combination of both action and drama, directed by Steven Spielberg with enthusiasm and flair, "Jaws" is an intriguing and successful cinematic masterpiece. It is one of those movies it is very difficult to write a review about, as so much has been written by now about the film's considerable merits.
Set in the coastal island town of Amity, he film begins with a gently teasing sequence in which a skinny-dipping young girl is seized and dragged underwater by a mysterious sinister prescence. Her remains are washed up on the shore the following day. The local police chief Brody(Roy Scheider) registers the death as a shark attack. Much to his frustration, the authorities refuse to acknowledge the existence of the shark. As Amity is a tourist town, the council are afraid of the impact it might have on the summer season, the source of the town's income. When they cannot the existence of the beast lurking off their beaches any longer, they hire the police chief, a mainland ichthyologist Hooper(Richard Dreyfuss) and a salty local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) to hunt and kill the shark....
It is a well-known fact by now that the technical aspects of the film came about largely through necessity and lack of the kind of technology that is easily available now. As a result, Spielberg did not show the shark for much of the film's first act, preferring to emphasise it's prescence through POV camera shots and John Williams pounding score. Without CGI, the producers had to build a 25-foot shark replica. It's easy to scoff at how fake it looks, but of all the models used in the "Jaws" movies this is easily the most convincing.
The film is well-staged and edited throughout. The shark attack scenes are very carefully played and built up and a minimum of gore is used. The dialogue scenes never drag, but slowly linger on certain characters allowing their flaws and idiosyncracies to show. The final hour in particular is brilliantly staged, weaving in character development with the ever-impending threat of the shark.
The script departs significantly from the Peter Benchley novel on which it's based. This is especially true of the man vs. shark final hour, the very action-movie ending upsetting the author so much he had to be thrown off the set. Other than that, dialogue is well-written coming naturally while simultaneously developing the characters. A key scene in this respect is Quint's eerily told USS Indianapolis monologue.
The performances are all first-rate. Scheider is a find as the down-to-earth Everyman hero Brody, and Richard Dreyfuss gives a brilliantly nervy performance as scientist Hooper. Stealing the film from both these two fine actors are Murray Hamilton as the town's greedy spin-doctor Mayor and Robert Shaw as likeable, but in the end embittered and bloodthirsty Quint.
A standout classic film, one which it's three sequels hadn't a hope in hell of equalling.