The Meg Review

The Meg

Genuinely annoyed that I liked this film, so I can’t use The Mehlodon.

Arnie fought The Predator, Batman fought Superman and now The Stath is taking on The Megalodon. What a world we live in where a movie like this can even exist. It’s tough to find a popcorn movie these days that isn’t starring The Rock, don’t even get me started on Skyscraper again. Even if you look at this year’s Summer Blockbusters you’ll notice that the biggest films this year are almost all sequels or linked to a previously existing property. Quite startingly from all the reviews that I’ve written so far only one of them was an original film, GO AWAY SKYSCRAPER. So, heading into August things were looking tough for me. I needed something original, something that screamed for my attention, something that was unlike anything that I had seen before. To my shock and delight Jason Statham and a 70-foot shark heard my cries for help and saved me in my time of need.

The plot synopsis for The Meg reads as follows, “After escaping an attack by what he claims was a 70-foot shark, Jonas Taylor must confront his fears to save those trapped in a sunken submarine.”. Now just from reading that you know that The Meg isn’t going to be a Citizen Kane level story.  You know exactly what your in for when your going to see a Statham movie and you know what your getting when you go to see a shark movie. Combine the two together and you know you’re in for a gritty Stath firing one liner’s while a shark wreaks havoc on whatever it can sink it’s teeth into. Normally Shark movies tend to be hit or miss. Jaws is the only one that is genuinely amazing, while the others that followed in the years that passed were for the most part horrendous (looking at you Deep Blue Sea). The 2010s have brought about the Shark Movie renaissance. What started as a joke with the Sharknado films quickly started to gather some steam and begin to churn out higher budgeted films like The Shallows and 47 Metres Down.  The Meg while nowhere near a great movie will definitely give you much more than you anticipate when you sit down to watch it.

This is Jason Statham’s film. The English actor is known for making ludicrous concepts work. The Crank series is the most ridiculous premise of a series ever but thoroughly entertaining thanks to The Stath. Statham in this film is having an absolute ball. Not only is he the badass attempting manoeuvres to fight The Meg that no one else will but he’s also very funny. Statham has comic chops that he’s only started to bring into his films recently, his turn in Spy carried that movie. Jonas Taylor is an extremely likable lead. Not a one-dimensional hero who is only there to save the day, Jones is a character who is determined for everyone to know that he isn’t crazy, and The Meg exists. Jonas is firing some wonderful one liner’s during the film, this isn’t Statham’s first rodeo he knows exactly what he’s signed up for. The thing that surprised me however is that the rest of the cast is much better than I predicted they would be.

The ensemble cast of The Meg is one of its strong points. Bingbing Li is a delight as Suyin who can hold her own against Jonas, their chemistry is on fire. Suyin is also given multiple action sequences to show that she’s not there just to sit around and watch. I was pretty unfamiliar with the actress before this film, besides that dire Transformers sequel, but I can see her being cast in a lot more blockbusters soon. Child actor Shuya Sophia Cai gives one of the more likable child performances than I’m normally used to seeing in Blockbusters. Her character, Meiying provided big laughs nearly every time she was on screen, her bonding with Jonas throughout the movie. Rainn Wilson is a standout as Morris, the smug billionaire who funds the entire mission. Wilson brings the comedic chops that he’s known for into his role, he knows exactly what film he’s in and has a blast with his performance. The rest of the cast don’t really fare as well with Ruby Rose giving a somewhat wooden performance and Page Kennedy’s character DJ going from intelligent science guy tumbling idiot in the blink of the eye. The cast all bounce off each other like they’ve been friends for years and they end up surprisingly being the most compelling feature of the movie. The problem with this is that this is a Shark movie where the humans are more interesting than a 70-foot shark.

The biggest problem with The Meg is that the title character isn’t very interesting. The CG shark looks magnificent with it genuinely being a terrifying sight to see. The problem lies with the films 12 rating. The rating being so low doesn’t allow for any blood in the film. So, what you get is s tense build up for The Meg to appear and instead of a grisly bloody end for a character, nearly all its victims get swallowed hole. Every death is played for laughs, instead of being used to show just how deadly the beast under the sea is. Director Jon Turtletaub came out and spoke recently on how the film doesn’t reflect his vision with the gorier version of the film being left on the cutting room floor to appease the 12 rating, “The number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic”.  Statham too, spoke of how the end product isn’t the film that he signed up to do, “Where’s the f***ing blood?’ It’s like, There’s a shark.”. for a director and a lead to both speak out about a film during it’s cinema run is ridiculous, but they do have a point. The film suffers from being too family friendly, even Jaws had the same rating and got away with so much more. Maybe one day we’ll see the uncut version of The Meg and the shark will be as awesome as it’s concept.

So, summer blockbuster season wraps up with The Meg. I had a lot of fun with this film. Even with its lack of gore the action was still stupid enough to keep me hooked. The Stath fighting a giant shark with a tiny knife is everything I want from life. There’s no sequel bait or needless cliff hangers, this film is just 2 hours of fun in the sea. Dig into your popcorn and enjoy The Meg for what it is. After all, how can a movie where Jason Statham exclaims “Chomp on this, you fishy bastard.” Not be a good time? In a summer where we started with Thanos and end with a shark we say goodbye to summer blockbusters for another year. I’ll never forget you Meg, thank you for being as ridiculous as you concept promised.

Fin

Best Moment: A character credited as ‘Awesome Kid at Beach’ is in the funniest sequence of the year.

Worst moment: Weak character deaths not living up to potential.

Best character: Jonas is every Statham character rolled into one and thank God for that.

Worst Character:  Jaxx (Ruby Rose) is awful at her job and someone really should’ve called her out on it.

Overall Rating: 3/5