"I Think we need a bigger boat!" Jaws
Believe it or not, I've never seen Jaws in its entirety! Not until the week of August 13, 2001, that is.......... even though I bought the video months beforehand, but that's another story. Anyway, here is the movie Jaws, one of the most popular films of all time, and I've never seen it in my 24 years. And this is pretty typical of me. Only sheer luck prevented me from missing Titantic, and I've never, ever, seen Jurassic Park.... well, except for a few moments while I was just passing by the living room to go to the kitchen for a snack, but that's about it. Jaws, like Jurassic Park, was directed by Steven Spielberg, and while I have no way of telling, I would bet that Jaws is the much superior work. As most people know, the story takes place in the town of Amity, before the July 4 weekend. A young woman dies while swimming in the ocean, and the police chief (Roy Scheider) investigates. The coroner initially suspects a shark attack, until the town mayor convinces him to change his mind – after all, it's a big weekend, and he doesn't want to scare the visitors away. The shark, nevertheless, kills a young boy in the middle of the day, with many onlookers, and soon a reward is sent out by the boy's mother to whomever can kill the shark. Nobody can catch it, and soon it is up to the police chief, as well as Quint (Robert Shaw), a crusty old fisherman, and a shark expert (Richard Dreyfuss) to track the beast down.
Jaws is not a deep movie, but it is well-made – one of the best of its kind (but what do I know about these kind of movies???). At least it knows how to tell its story, and make us interested. The movie doesn't waste much time with any extra business – the very first scene is of the events leading up to the girl's death, and, after that, we see the police chief and his problems with the shark, the town, the mayor, and himself. Actually, the problems with himself aren't exactly told to us very explicitly. He left the NYPD for reasons unexplained, and we do know that he has a fear of the water, but he doesn't talk about it. But there is a very interesting moment which might tell us something, and that is during the scene when he, Shaw and Dreyfuss have a drunken conversation. Shaw and Dreyfuss compare wounds, and the camera cuts to a shot of Scheider looking at a scar near his waist, and we think he is going to say something, but he doesn't. Perhaps the scar isn't a big deal, but why wouldn't he mention it, to keep up with the gaiety of the other two?
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