Great White
The ocean is wide and full of memories; for Michelle Minase it is what made her persuade her reluctant husband Joji to travel with her on a pilgrimage to the area off the coast of Australia nicknamed “Hell Reef” where in 1951 her late grandfather had been the only survivor of a shipwreck, his last request to her being that his ashes be scattered where his shipmates died.
Chartering a floatplane with Pearl Air, for their pilot Charlie Brody, trained as a marine biologist, his overriding memory is of the shark attack which ended his career and almost cost him his leg but also placed him in the emergency room under the care of nurse Kaz Fellows; now pregnant with their first child, they are planning their wedding, but with the bank already chasing them it will be another expense.
For Joji, it is almost drowning as a child, an incident which has left him deeply traumatised though he tries to control it for the sake of Michelle, but arriving at the sunny cove of clear water and white sand his fears emerge when they find the remains of a body. Calling it in to the coastguard, the last photos on the cellphone indicate another person may be out there and as the only people on the scene Charlie knows they are her best chance for survival – if they can find her in the strong current.
Taking great advantage of the majestic scenery of Redcliffe Peninsula, Queensland, Great White captures the wilderness of the unspoiled coast in aerial shots and contrasts them with the vast expanses of water in which the impromptu rescue team find themselves afloat in a life raft when the plane’s buoyancy is compromised, the surface unbroken but the depths concealing the great white sharks which now track them.
A combination of spectacular underwater footage of real sharks, a mechanical prop and a digital stand in which only disappoints in one unfortunately crucial scene, the focus of Great White is the humans, Aaron Jakubenko, Katrina Bowden and Te Kohe Tuhaka as Charlie, Kaz and cook Benny and Kimie Tsukakoshi and Tim Kano as Michelle and Joji, capable adults who in a crisis assess the situation and make the best choices of limited options with only infrequent and fully justified lapses into panic.
Writer Michael Boughen giving the ensemble better material to work with than many similar survival dramas, the characters more than just fishfood, director Martin Wilson’s approach is as stripped to bare essentials as the sparse gear the survivors have to defend themselves against the persistent alpha predator of the ocean which is never portrayed as malicious, simply acting out of an instinct disrupted by global warming it did not cause and cannot comprehend yet which has changed its feeding patterns and territory.
Great White is available on DVD and digital download from Monday 17th May
