SHARKS IN VENICE (2008)

SHARKS IN VENICE (2008)

Tagline: Welcome to the perfect tourist trap. 

(Action, Adventure, Sharks As Watchdogs) [R]

One more thing, Mr. Franks, I heard you talking about sharks. There are no sharks in Venice, capisce?

In this one, David Franks heads to Venice with his fiancé Laura to investigate his father’s untimely death. When he gets there he realizes his father was killed by a shark which is just really uncommon in Venice. On a dive to find out what his father may have been looking for he discovers a treasure, but is injured and has to leave it there. The Venice authorities request that he leave and not report the shark. That night he and his fiancé are invited to dinner where the local mob gives him an offer he must refuse. Will David be able to untangle the mystery as to why we've got a shark in freakin Venice?

First off, a lot like some of the other shark flicks I have seen, this movie is beautifully shot to appear that they are in Venice, which must have been a challenge because it wasn’t filmed in Venice, it was filmed in Bulgaria. On top of being a movie that has a decent amount of “shark” it actually has a bit of an INDIANA JONES feel. There is a backstory that involves the crusades and booby traps and other cool stuff. 

If you watch a lot of shark movies like I do, you know by now, that the genre has no problem with awesome-sounding concepts but is still loaded with a ton of movies that are terribly executed. So when you start breaking down all the shark movies, we actually have a LOT that are far worse than this thing. 

We have a scene where a lady gets shot and there is zero blood. We have great whites swimming around where there is clearly a good amount of light coming through the surface of the water because it’s stock footage, but this movie takes place in the murky waterways of Venice. In this setting, the stock footage looks just totally insane and really doesn’t work. I kind of wish this had a giant budget because the ideas were pretty entertaining. 

The lead actor is Stephen Baldwin (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, BIO DOME) who plays David Franks. Stephen is not as good an actor as his brother Alec, but at least he isn’t up on murder charges for shooting a crew member on a movie set. To be honest, Stephen is actually just fine in this role and his fiancé (in the movie) played by Vanessa Johansson is a decent actress as well. We also get Atanas Srebrev who was Agent Madison in 2019’s HELLBOY and he does a decent job. So overall, I think it’s pretty silly to say this was poorly acted. I think it could just have been better shot. Even a few filters and a better score would have done this movie a lot of favors. 

Where this movie succeeded was in giving us a pretty cool story and an interesting concept on a low budget. The shark effects are okay, but I do wish the underwater attacks weren’t so frantic and that we got clearer shots of what was going on. I don’t know how realistic it was and the history behind the treasure was a little wonky, but hey, it was pretty fun.

Overall I have to give this one a 4 out of 7. It’s not quite a 5, but it’s very watchable and definitely is not in the bottom 40 or 50 shark movies ever made.
 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MILLENNIUM FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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