Going on 30 years old, and still the greatest movie of all time...

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2005)

Martin Brody is the new police chief of Amity, an island resort town Somewhere in New England. He has a wife named Ellen, and two sons named Michael and Sean. On a summer morning, Brody is called to the beach, where the mangled body of Summer vacationer Chrissie Watkins has washed ashore. The medical examiner tells Brody that it could have been a shark that killed Watkins.
Mayor Larry Vaughn, who is desperate to not lose the money that, will be brought in by 4th of July tourists, wants Brody to say Watkins's death was caused by a motorboat propeller instead of a shark, because the thought of a shark in Amity's waters would drive tourists away from Amity. It looks like Vaughn is a mayor who puts money ahead of people's lives. Shark expert Matt Hooper believes Watkins was killed by a shark. Hooper is proved right a few days later, when Alex Kintner is killed by the shark that killed Watkins.
Looking for the quickest solution, Vaughn tells the entire local fishermen to let him know if they see the shark. A shark hunter named Quint offers to find the shark and kill it, but Vaughn thinks Quint's price of $10,000 is too high. When a tiger shark is killed and hauled in by a couple of boaters, Vaughn hastily says that the shark crisis is over, but Hooper says the shark that's been killing people a huge great white shark is still in Amity's waters, but Vaughn leaves the beaches opened because all he cares about is the 4th of July tourist money.
On the 4th of July, Vaughn encourages people to swim at the beach, and Hooper is proved right again when the shark kills a man, biting the man's leg off. Michael, who was in the water at the time of the attack, is taken to the hospital, where he's treated for shock after watching the shark kill the guy. Brody asks Vaughn to hire Quint to find the shark. Because his own kids were at that beach too, Vaughn agrees to hire Quint to find the shark. Quint, Hooper, and Brody are sent out to sea in Quint's boat, the Orca, ready to do whatever it takes to find the shark.
Ever since I was, at least five years old, Jaws has, and will always be my all time favorite movie. Going on 30 years old, there has yet to be a film that has the amount of intensity and brilliance that Jaws has throughout the picture. Jaws more or less invented the "Summer Blockbuster" by becoming the highest grossing film of all time. There's has yet to be a shark film that even comes close to Jaws. They all suck basically compared to Jaws.
What can be said about Jaws that you don't already know? It's the original "summer" movie. It was the first to raise the roof with screams and then subsequently bring it down with applause. The legacy of Jaws isn't just that of a great summer movie, but of a great movie period.
The popcorn flick formula, one that has been imitated for decades, was begun with this malfunctioning mechanical shark. However, unlike most of its successors, Jaws filled the pit of your stomach with more than just popcorn; you got a nice helping of fear as well. For many, even after thirty years, it's still the ultimate event movie.
While it was Hitchcock who was first dubbed the "master of suspense," and it was Coppola whose Godfather first shattered records, no film up until Jaws' release in the summer of 1975 had so successfully combined movie-making, mass-audience appeal, and box-office magic. A perfect movie -- a cinematic machine that is a miracle of craftsmanship.
In addition to bringing a fear of the water into public consciousness, it also catapulted twenty-eight year-old director, Steven Spielberg, into super-stardom. While Spielberg's earlier independent, film, and television work was impressive, it was Jaws that made him a big name.
It wasn't only Spielberg's contribution that made Jaws what it is, it was the efforts of several people, all hoping against hope that they could turn what was becoming a disaster-ridden film into something worthwhile. From the film's major screenwriter Carl Gottlieb to the ad-libs of the actors to John Williams' perfect score. Somehow everything came together to produce a movie that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Perhaps the first thing that went right, other than the decision to give Spielberg the job, was the casting. The three principle actors all gave career-defining performances. Roy Scheider (playing everyman Police Chief Martin Brody) has just the right amount of heroism and cowardice for the audience to identify with.On the opposite end of the spectrum you've got Robert Shaw (as sea-hardened Quint) captaining the Orca and giving the movie a character that'll drag viewers towards the shark when all they want to do is turn back. Finally there's the bearded Richard Dreyfuss (scientist Matt Hooper) who is the brains to Quint's brawn, the reason to his madness.
The idea was simple, the execution was anything but. Despite the difficulties surrounding the production, intentionally or accidentally -- but probably both -- Spielberg and company hit exactly the right beats and pushed exactly the right buttons. The result is Jaws, a movie that, to this day, is still making people scared to go in the water. Da-dummm...
*****/*****