Touches You

The Age of Commercialism

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The Deep is an extremely dull underwater salvage operation film. Surface level in its content.After Cloche had taken Nolte and Bisset's characters off the road and searched them, Nolte's character right after decides to go searching for the booty, leaving the real booty ashore. This moment is just absolutely absurd to me and completely took me out of the film, so bloody stupid. Nothing you could ever find is going to be more valuable to you than her. Anyway, it was all pointless and so much time is spent just with long slow underwater scenes that obviously don't have dialogue. The characters are poor and the film monotonous.

I love Robert Shaw and Eli Wallach, both two great great actors. Eli Wallach has a small, insignificant role in this. Robert Shaw is good but I love him much more in "From Russia with Love", "Battle of the Bulge", "The Sting" and especially in "A Man for All Seasons". Jacqueline Bisset is young and beautiful. Same Nick Nolte. Here he is not the great actor from later roles like in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" or "Cape Fear". Beautiful underwater filming by Christopher Challis. When I first saw it, about 40 years ago, I liked it more (I was about 20 years old). Watched again in 2018, I find it static, monotonous, boring, does not have the same charm.

While wreck diving off the coast of Bermuda tourists David Sanders and his girlfriend Gail Berke explore a ship not in the guide book; it is the Goliath; a second world war era ship that was carrying a large quantity of explosives; it was also carrying several thousand ampoules of morphine and finding one of these is the beginning of all their troubles. Haitian Henri Cloche wants the ampoules because of the drugs they contain and is willing to do what it takes to get them David and Gail aren't that interested in the morphine though; they are more interested in a medallion they found on the site; it is much older than anything on that ship should be. They take it to local treasure hunter Romer Treece and eventually they determine that there are two wrecks there; The Goliath and a French vessel called the Griffin which was transporting treasure as well as her declared cargo. Further dives produce more treasure but if they are to prove it is the lost Spanish treasure they will have to find an item from the list of lost pieces... they will also have to avoid sharks, Cloche's henchmen and a particularly mean moray eel!I expected this to be another dangerous underwater animal film being rushed out to cash in on the success of 'Jaws' but thankfully it was much better than that; it is really a decent treasure hunting adventure with some drug dealers thrown in to increase the danger. Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset are officially the stars of the film, and they aren't bad, but it is Robert Shaw who steals the show as Treece; a character that isn't dissimilar to the role he played in 'Jaws'. There are also notable appearances from Eli Wallach and Louis Gossett Jr. The underwater scenes are well shot and when there is action it looks confused enough to feel real. Above water there are some nice shots of Bermuda but it never feels like it is trying to act as a tourist brochure by showing all the best sites. The story is fairly simple but it is told well and there is a good amount of action... including a rather scary scene where somebody is attacked with an outboard motor! There are also a couple of references to real Bermuda treasure; the gold and ruby cross is a clear reference to the gold and emerald 'Tucker's Cross', which was found by Teddy Tucker who had a cameo as the harbour master.

I'm not sure why this film doesn't have a better score, it really is a treat to watch. Granted it is not a "10"- probably more like a "7", but I'm trying to help it's overall score. I think the fact that Peter Benchley wrote it and it revolves around the ocean people are expecting something "Jaws"-esque, which it definitely is not. What it is is a great film about diving for lost treasure and keeping one step ahead of a local drug kingpin (Gossett) who has his own interests in what lies below. Robert Shaw is excellent (as usual), as is the rest of the cast. It saddens me that some people have called it "slow". I think it has a good pace, with a nice amount of action mixed in. It's interesting that this movie was basically "re-made" (more like stolen if you ask me) as "Into the Blue", which was a complete stinker. THAT film was so incredibly slow that not even Jessica Alba's hotness could rescue it.If you like films about diving or lost treasure, you should definitely check it out- but I would recommend this film to anyone who prefers a good storyline to films that are all flash and no substance.