Don't Luc Now ...

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2005)

... but it's been done before. On the other hand what hasn't but so many posters seem to regard this as totally original that I have to question whether they are real movie buffs or maybe just like underwater stuff. It's not necessary to have actually SEEN every film ever made or even say a Tenth of all the films ever made but serious movie buffs should be AWARE of what has gone before and I refuse to believe that I'm the only person who has ever HEARD of if not actually seen 'Beyond The 12-Mile Reef, a Fox entry from the early fifties with a fairly starry cast-list for the time; Robert Wagner, then just establishing himself as a handsome hunk if not actually an actor, played a young Greek conch fisherman who spent his days diving with his father, Gilbert Roland, for conches (sponges) and as the supply dwindled obliged to move into the much deeper waters of the title. Richard Boone was on hand as a rival fisherman with a comely daughter, Tery Moore, engaged to Peter Graves (shortly before he appeared as the German 'plant' in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17) until Wagner comes on the scene. As if that line up weren't enough J. Carroll Naish was along for the ride to steal every scene that wasn't nailed down and let's not forget Wagner's Greek mother who does a lot of cooking. Luc Besson has taken this plot and refined it slightly; it's still about diving to great depths and there's still an attractive woman to complicate things although Besson is not completely without shame and dispenses with the rivalry between divers Jean Reno and Jean-Marc Barr almost as soon as it manifests itself. It has a tendency to be episodic rather than continuous and there are too many non sequiters - we have, for example, to imagine how Barr got to Peru and from there to Taormina and not worry too much about stealing a dolphin and releasing it into the sea. It's always good to see Jean Reno and it was interesting to catch Sergio Castellitto in an early performance but that's about it.