User Reviews

Enzo G. Castellari gets plenty of love around these parts. After all, he brought us 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx and Warriors of the Wasteland, amongst others. Of course, we already covered his Jaws Xerox The Last Shark this week, but that's not the only shark movie he made. And get this - he's bringing Franco Nero along for the ride.

Mike Di Donato (Nero) is a man with a past, living a hermit's life on a sea island while his woman works at the market. We meet him after he beats up an entire bar full of people with no problem just to rescue one loud troublemaker, who becomes his partner.

The past never stays buried - an unidentified organization wants Mike's help in taking back the one hundred million dollars that have sunk beneath the ocean. Mike's the only guy who can do it - but he planned on grabbing it himself. There are also tons of sharks (and a comical paragliding sequence) to contend with.

There's also quite a bit of wacky music from the De Angelis brothers, who also recorded as Oliver Onions. They did the music for a metric ton (well, maybe 1000 kilograms, as Italy follows the metric system) of Italian films, such as Torso, Death Rage, A Blade in the Dark and, of course, Yor, Hunter from the Future. Becca would like everyone reading this to know that they basically take one song and loop it for the entire movie. So if you like this song, you're in for a treat.

A solid actioner combining the talents of Franco Nero (without a doubt one of the most charismatic and capable of Italian actors, ever) and Enzo G. Castellari (the acclaimed Italian action director whose use of slow-motion and ultra-stylish action has led to him being discovered as the "Italian John Woo") for what is an entertaining, if not exactly classic, movie. The main problem with this film is the underwater photography. Sure, it looks nice - especially nice here, too, none of that murkiness you see in THUNDERBALL - but, as with all underwater photography ever filmed, it serves to slow down the pacing of the movie.

THE SHARK HUNTER is a beautiful-to-look at adventure, filmed in stunning tropical locations with an accomplished cast and seasoned director at the helm. So what's the problem? There's no major one, other than that the lack of action here stops it from being a class act. Aside from an expertly-staged bar room brawl, the first hour is taken up with slow-moving plot shenanigans and lots of deep sea diving. It's interesting at first but after forty minutes I was itching for something exciting to happen. Luckily I didn't have to wait too long until it did.

The film's highlight is an extended chase sequence between hero Franco Nero and villain Werner Pochath. Starting off as a snazzy car chase, the action soon changes to a heart-rending (in the literal sense) chase by foot (incorporating a tense shoot-out into the proceedings), then finishes off by becoming a plane/boat chase through swampland! Also in the latter part of the film are a handful of shoot-outs, beatings, and punch-ups to be entertained by, which incorporate Castellari's excellent use of slow motion which happens just at the right times to top everything off - he certainly doesn't overuse it, only bringing into play when the time is right and he wants to finish off a scene with an ultra-cool moment of stylised violence.

The plot is fairly standard stuff, with plenty of clichéd characters like a greedy gang boss, a slimy gang of thugs led by a really slimy slime, silent hit men, and some barely-clothed women wandering around to liven up the scenery. Everyone is against each other so plenty of death ensues towards the end of the movie - particularly during the downbeat finale which kills off just about every supporting character there is, for no real reason! There's little gore to speak of, expect for a cool stunt involving a shark ripping off a guy's leg underwater, but this is no horror film (incidentally, Castellari was originally up to direct ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS - which I'm sure shares underwater photography with this movie - before Lucio Fulci took over and the rest is history).

As for the smallish cast, it's a winner. Franco Nero effortlessly sails through his heroic, good-natured ex-mafia character and is one guy you can always root for, and slimy villain Eduardo Fajardo (a spagwest veteran) makes for an adequate foil. Michael Forrest plays Donovan, a character whose motivations don't really come clear until the end, whilst the Mexican Jorge Luke has the comedy relief part of Nero's partner, an excitable and slightly dumb - but no less heroic - companion. Keep an eye out for director Castellari appearing in a cool role as a thug who gets to knock Nero's lights out in glorious slow-motion. However, the guy who really shines in his part is the underrated Werner Pochath, playing the aforementioned 'slimy slime' with his usual brand of cocky, seething nastiness - good stuff. An enjoyable treat for fans of the director, star or genre, but lacking the finesse, action and plotting that would make it one to come back to.