My favorite movie of all time

Rating: 10/10 (15 May 2006)

This magnificently-made masterpiece of a motion picture is definitely Steven Spielberg's best piece of work yet. Even now, over thirty years since it was released, it's still scaring people to death because it's so brilliantly made. From the moment that I saw "Jaws" for the first time, I was amazed by the movie and it instantly became my favorite of all time.
First of all, there's the fact that Steven Spielberg is in the director's chair and when that happens, you're guaranteed to get a good movie. Even the worst of his movies are worth seeing over and over again a few times. And "Jaws" is probably his best. I find it amazing he wasn't nominated for an Oscar. His great idea of not seeing the shark until the movie is half over was a great one. Although John Williams was and he won the Academy Award for his haunting and still very famous music score. It's definitely the best horror theme ever made. Very original and powerful.
Also, we have a cast of talented actors. Roy Scheider plays "Police Chief Martin Brody", the law officer who is desperate to hunt down and kill the shark that is menacing the people he was hired to protect. The late and talented Robert Shaw is "Quint", a cantankerous modern Ahab who hunts sharks for a living. And Richard Dreyfuss is "Matt Hooper" a young marine biologist called down to help Brody and Quint handle the twenty-five-foot-long great white shark.
Note: I also thought that Robert Shaw should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in this movie.
"Jaws" is based on a bestselling novel by Peter Benchley (who died in January of this year, 2006). And although the book was a great one, definitely one of my all-time favorite novels, I prefer the movie. I liked some of the screenwriter's decisions better. Such as having Brody and Hooper being friends instead of enemies. And I also think that the ending of the movie is far more climatic than in the book. In the movie, the shark is killed when a tank of compressed air is crammed into its mouth and then shot with a rifle, causing it to burst open and tear the shark's head apart. In the novel, the shark just bleeds to death. This is not an insult towards Peter Benchley's ideas, I just felt that Spielberg's version was a better one.
"Jaws" is the best thriller of all time. Definitely a classic that will always be around. I hope it never gets remade, because nobody will ever be able to do what Steven Spielberg and his team did on this movie. And besides, there will never be another Robert Shaw to play Quint.