One of the best thrillers ever made

Rating: 10/10 (10 September 2004)

A great white shark is attacking people on the waters surrounding Amity Island. Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches but the mayor (Murray Hamilton) is dead set against it. Then the attacks continue and Brody, Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) go after it.
I remember seeing this in a theatre back when I was 13. It was a HUGE hit when it came out. It came out in the summer and the PG rating (with a severe warning saying the shark attacks might be too brutal for younger viewers) had kids pushing to see it. Back then this was pretty gruesome stuff. The attack scenes are bloody and there's a scene where you see a man get eaten...and it's not pretty. Back then this scared me silly. It doesn't scare me that much now but it's still a great thriller.
Director Steven Spielberg shot it in beautiful Martha's Vineyard (right here in MA) and perfectly caught the feel of a summer community. Also the film is always moving with overlapping dialogue and the editing zipping the film along (it deserved the editing Oscar it won). Also the acting is great--Scheider is perfectly cast as Brody; Dreyfuss hit it big with his performance here and Shaw is just great in one of his last performances before (sadly) alcoholism killed him. There's also strong support from Lorraine Gary (as Brody's wife) and Hamilton as the mayor. A rare case when a lousy book (by Peter Benchley) became a great movie. And there's John Williams Oscar-winning now classic score in here.
It's incredible how Spielberg got such a great movie--everything went wrong! The weather never agreed with them and they had hellish problems with the mechanical shark (which kept malfunctioning). And Shaw's drinking held up production also.
Basically this is a top thriller which still holds up almost 30 years later.
A must-see!