Jaws: The Revenge

• Produced and Directed by Joseph Sargent
• July 17, 1987

The now-widowed Ellen Brody is convinced a great white shark is seeking revenge on her family when one kills her youngest son and she also encounters one in the Bahamas.

A great deal can be said about Jaws: The Revenge. It killed the series. It has a shark that roars. It introduced “This time it’s personal” as a tagline. It paid for a house for Michael Caine. All accurate. But what is almost never said is that this is so much less about a killer shark and much more about Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) learning to love and live again after the death of her son and husband. It’s about a person learning to deal with tragedy and trauma and I am not sure anybody cared to see such a story in a Jaws film when these are movies about killer sharks.

What amazes me most about this film is that it got a theatrical release. Despite the attempt at depth this has all the markings of direct-to-video. Plenty of bad acting. Idiotic plot. You can infer that great whites or maybe just one have developed a personal grudge against the Brodys for the death of Bruce, Bruce Jr., and Bruce III. I have this visual in my mind of these great whites sitting in a smokey room putting out a hit on the Brodys like something from a bad mob film.

The best thing in this film is Michael Caine as Hoagie Newcombe. It’s well-known Caine has no love for Jaws: The Revenge but unlike Roy Scheider who had no love for Jaws 2, Michael Caine could hide it while on screen. He turns in a very good performance in a film that maybe should not have been given his best efforts.

His Hoagie is a bit of a charmer with heart. Caine is certainly one of the greats and his moments on screen make this film so much better. Somehow he is able to pull things together and give it cohesion just by being there. Perhaps because his relationship with Ellen is what this film is truly about and not a killer shark. Caine and Gary are great together and you can see real progression in the relationship the actors portray.

It is strongly implied Ellen has some kind of mental connection to the sharks and that the sharks are now hunting the Brody family. If this were the case why doesn’t she just move off Amity Island and avoid beaches? After her son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) is killed (and for some reason I was convinced the character died in the third movie) she goes down to visit her other son Michael (Lance Guest) who is working on an island and she goes about frolicking in the water. Considering what is going through her mind this all seems illogical.

The kills. Kills are important in a movie with a killer anything. The ones we get are very minimal in Jaws: The Revenge and have almost no shock value. You’re not horrified. You’re not terrified. You’re not even a little concerned. Then again nobody that gets killed you are invested in. Martin has died off screen of a heart attack. Sean just breezes into the story and is gone and now that I think about I am hard pressed to think of any others. They certainly happened but had no impact.

I’m a little confused how this fits in with the timeline when it comes to Jaws 3-D. Michael is still going to school here but in Jaws 3-D it looked like he had completed school and taken a job at SeaWorld while the Sean was still in college off in Colorado but he’s going to visit his brother.

Mario Van Peebles shows up in this movie as Michael’s friend Jake sporting a Jamaican accent that comes and goes. The first time it happened I expected a joke to be made of it and how he was just faking it but apparently for the character it’s the way he is supposed to talk. Van Peebles just forgot to keep the accent going and nobody noticed while filming.

Jaws: The Revenge is a very polished looking production. And it’s competently directed. The thing is it is not about a killer shark but about a woman dealing with grief learning to live and love again. That departure into a whole other area ruined this film. Audiences expected one thing and got something else entirely whose ending felt lackluster.

As bad as this movie is, it’s hard to not watch. It’s like passing by an auto accident. You can’t help but look. You want to see how bad it is. But unlike a serious car accident amongst the wreckage there is some good there.

Jaws: The Revenge is not something I would recommend if you’re looking for a quality killer shark movie. It’s more to check out as a curiosity. Something you just need to see for yourself.