Starring: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 113 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2018
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‘The Meg’ wants to be one of those movies so ridiculous that you can basically smell the popcorn grease on your fingers as you watch, feel every cheesy line and unbelievable moment being washed down with a large gulp of soda. A flick that unreservedly demands brains be checked at the door of the cinema. Sadly, the magic of summer blockbuster isn’t that easy to conjure. In fact, the most unbelievable thing to happen in ‘The Meg’, is that they managed to make a movie about British action titan Jason Statham squaring off against a prehistoric mega-shark, this dull.
Statham stars as Jonas Taylor, as ex-rescue diver turned Thai beach-based boozehound after he made the impossible call to sacrifice his two best mates to save the crew of a crippled nuclear submarine. Jonas thinks that a massive, unidentified creature was responsible for destroying the sub, but everyone else writes this off as survivor’s guilt or psychosis induced by low blood gases. That is, until another submarine is stranded on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, its systems taken out by – that’s right – a massive, unidentified creature. In the first of the screenplay’s unforgivable coincidences, one of the three crewmates aboard this new deep-sea casualty is none other than Jonas’s ex-wife, Lori (Aussie Jessica McNamee, solid), and Jonas is the only man capable of saving her.
Lori’s expedition was bankrolled by Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson), a US billionaire whose characterisation starts and ends at his choice of expensive sneakers and flat caps (today, nothing screams “money” more than grown men dressing like teens). Morris has paid for a schmick new research facility called Mana One, about 200 miles off the coast of China. Operated by the father-daughter team of Dr Minway Zhang (Winston Chao) and Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing), Mana One comes pre-equipped with all the gear that Jonas needs to launch his daring rescue mission. There’s also a diverse workforce at his disposal, including operations chief Mac (Cliff Curtis, a welcome addition), engineers Jaxx (Ruby Rose) and DJ (Page Kennedy, funny), and medic Dr Heller (Robert Taylor).
As the title suggests, the threat awaiting Jonas (and circling our imperilled explorers on the sea floor) is a megalodon, a giant species of shark long thought extinct with the dinosaurs. Instead, the ancestors of this meg (and yes, this oddly flip abbreviation of an enormous maneater is unsurprisingly grating) have been trapped in the dark recesses of the ocean for millennia by a freezing cold thermocline (a layer of water marked by extreme temperature changes). However, when Jonas’ rescue mission leads to a breach in the thermocline, the megalodon escapes from its aquatic prison, leaving the Mana One team with no choice but to kill the beast before it makes it to the nearest beach.
Despite a sizable budget, the CGI strewn throughout ‘The Meg’ is lacklustre, from the seemingly untextured titular terror to several extended open water sequences shot against clumsy green screens. Although Statham gives it his all, his commitment can’t bail out this sinking ship. After Statham’s comic timing was highlighted by his chemistry with Dwayne Johnson (not to mention his movie-stealing action scene co-starring a baby) in ‘The Fate of the Furious’, ‘The Meg’ looks to recapture this roguish charm, even pairing him off with another child in the form of Suyin’s daughter, Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai, who can probably claim to have the best chemistry with Statham, albeit from a limited bunch). However, the film’s emotional and humorous beats rely too heavily on undeveloped relationships, making them fall flat. Instead, these interpersonal moments between the flurries of aquatic action amount to nothing. Statham deserves a better star vehicle than this.
The script, adapted by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber from Steve Alten’s 1997 novel ‘Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror’, has admittedly strong bones. The film’s three acts have a nicely escalating scale, moving from the trench floor to the open sea to a crowded beach. However, the connecting material, the components making up individual scenes, is just plain bad. Characters change at random as required to propel the story (Jack Morris is an egotistic villain one moment, noble hero the next), while the dialogue is unrealistic and consistently corny, and that’s not even getting into the awkward romance forced onto Statham and Bingbing.
The problem with ‘The Meg’ is that it knew that it would be effectively review-proof. The moment that director Jon Turtletaub conceived a sequence that involved launching Jason Statham into a low orbit straddling a 25-metre long shark, he assumed that everything else would be background noise. Since ‘Jaws’ kickstarted the summer movie craze over 40-years ago, the man vs. shark blockbuster has occupied a special place in multiplex lore. ‘The Meg’ clearly wants to slot into this tradition, but it doesn’t come close. It’s bad and knowingly over-the-top, but it’s not cringingly awful enough to stake a claim in the “so bad it’s good” territory, à la the notorious ‘Sharknado’ films. When scene after scene consistently fail to grab you, be it due to shoddy CGI or non-existent chemistry or ham-fisted dialogue, no amount of Statham vs. Meg action can rescue this mess.
Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
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