Red Water DVD

Red Water

*

2003
Directed by Charles Robert Carner
Lou Diamond Phillips .... Sanders
Coolio .... Ice
Rob Boltin .... Emery

http://www.tbssuperstation.com/originalmovies/title/0,,7460,00.html
R
DVD
Gather around, kiddies...it's STORY TIME!

Once
upon a time there was a poor desperate executive at New Line
Productions. Let's call him Fenwick, because it sounds really pathetic.


Pathetic like Fenwick's career.

Fenwick was about to
lose his job, and every other executive was really angry. Fenwick
hadn't had a good idea for a movie in years. Fenwick needed a movie
that would make some money, and quickly, so Fenwick thought and
thought.

He went to the video store and looked around, hoping
to find an idea, but all he could find over on those shelves were
movies like Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Deep Blue Sea.

He went
home and watched the Discovery Channel, hoping for an idea. He watched
every episode of Shark Week until his eyes grew red and tired.

Finally, he just whomped together a script for YET. ANOTHER. SHARK. MOVIE.

This is how Red Water was born.

I
saw the FBI release notice...you know, that annoying one about how you
can't copy movies? Someone ought to tell New Line that this movie has
already been done.

We start right off with a bang...a grandpa -
grandson team is out for a fishing expedition, and they run afoul of an
oil well in the middle of their beloved fishing hole. Afoul as in the
"suddenly on top of one of their seismic charges designed for
excavation."

As our dynamic fishing duo sets off away from the
explosions, another goes off, and out from the cloud swims our brand
new sharkly villain.

Oh, yeah...I forgot to mention. This all
takes place in the middle of a large lake in Louisiana, Lake Varret.
Yeah. You heard me right.

THERE'S A SHARK IN THE BAYOU!

I can't even begin to contemplate what's wrong with that.

Now
we have our hero emerge: Lou Diamond Phillips as the heroic charter
fishing boat captain, out to save his fishing boat. I wonder...what
WILL he be fishing for by the end?

We have something more
pressing to deal with right now. In a side plot a truly stereotypical
gangster with a Jamaican accent thicker than Captain Morgan with a
cement mixer is calling our fisherman to find a stolen stash of his
ill-gotten loot.

Eventually, the fisherman and the criminals'
paths collide, forming a thick, multi-plotted moulange. The oil well
builds in pressure until finally, it explodes. One of the resident oil
well personnel goes underwater to fix it and cuts his hand. Well...we
all know what THAT'S gonna do, right??

The criminals take
redneck to a whole new levels...fishing for sharks with dynamite. The
criminals, believing the shark finally dead, send down their newfound
hostages, namely our fisherman and his crew. They begin a new search
for the criminals' lost fortune.

Of course the shark is STILL
not dead. Anyone else not surprised? I'm not surprised. Anyone
surprised? At all? An explosive ending sets us up for a big finish,
with criminals and fisherfolk alike attempting to escape burning boats.
The last great climax involves a big shark taking a bigger oil drill to
its big teeth.

The results are not what one would call pleasant or appetizing.

Finally
we have a nice quiet denouement featuring a lot of dithering on about
"spirits of the swamp." Not to mention a little pseudo - Morality Play
about the fisherman considering whether or not to take the reward money
placed on the now - dead shark's head. Or rather, tooth, because that's
all that's left of Jaws---um, I mean, of course, the BULL SHARK.

Subtitles
abound. We have all the standards...English, Spanish, French, and
Japanese. We also for some reason have many many others.

Portuguese, for example. How about Chinese? Korean? Thai? I don't

know just what's with all the subtitles but Lord, there are PLENTY.

Trailers,
too. We have Bats, The Big Hit, and something called "Ride or Die." The
first two truly perplex me...Bats and The Big Hit have already been
released in theatres and on video, and have been since 1999. Why on
EARTH are these two relics being trailered on a NEW RELEASE DVD??

Kind
of a nice bit of irony at the end...a park ranger gives an impromptu
environmentalist harangue on a bridge overlooking the lake, whereupon
she is eaten by the shark.

This is the predictable, yet not too
unpalatable, release of Red Water. It never made it to theatres...I
think it might have been a TV movie, actually. At the end of the
credits, we get a quick shot of the New Line Television logo, so that
really suggests where this was BEFORE we got it on our video store
shelves. That's really kind of sad when you think about it...this is
just recycled TV movie. Look at the cast; this was never supposed to be
big. Lou Diamond Phillips. Kristy Swanson. COOLIO, for crying out loud.
Red Water is just another bland place filler in an already glutted
market.