A different skill to the hunt

Rating: 9/10 (25 January 2014)

I've always had a theory of why Jaws is such a frightening film for so many people. It is because we are challenging the shark which maybe the most perfect killing and eating machine in nature in his own habitat. We are land creatures, we cannot breath in water, we can only hold our breath going under for a limited time. Even with scuba apparatus we are no match for the shark in the place where he lives and breathes. So when one of them gets real close to our land habitat and starts killing off swimmers we frighten easily because any one of us could be his victim if we dare venture in the water.
It's this terror that Peter Benchley's novel and Steven Spielberg's film exploits to the max. Jaws is almost like two films put together about the same subject. In the first part when the first shark victim shows up, Roy Scheider as constable of the small island town of Amity Island on the New England coast, he wants to close the beach. But the city fathers led by Murray Hamilton say no way. This is the summer tourist season which the town lives and dies by. Of course a couple of good lawsuits would truly cripple the town, but that fact never seems to enter anyone's thinking. Spielberg truly shows the greed of humankind here. Of course when more shark death occur, then the professionals have to take over.
Those professionals are Scheider, oceanographer Richard Dreyfuss and fisherman Robert Shaw who has a boat they can use for shark hunting. He's got first hand experience with sharks, he spent some time in the water as a sailor in the Pacific War with sharks picking off his mates one by one. They each bring a different skill to the hunt.
These three are not the most compatible shipmates ever brought together for a common purpose. In fact the conflicts between all three leads drive the film in the last half. When the big great white shark comes calling though it's a tough battle to put him down. Jaws won three Oscars in technical categories, music scoring, sound, and film editing in addition to being nominated for Best Picture in 1975. But it's as much the actors as well as the technical virtuosity of Jaws that make it the great film it is.
Centuries from now Jaws will be scaring the pants off people because we're still afraid of what lives in the water.