Deep Water (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Renny HarlinRelease Date(s)
2026 (July 14, 2026)Studio(s)
Arclight Films/Simmons/Hamilton Productions/Nostromo Pictures/Aristos Films/DW Film Holdings (Magenta Light Studios)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: F
Review
Most people mark the beginning of the disaster movie craze with 1970s Airport. But natural and man-made disasters proved big box office well before them in such films as The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), San Francisco (1936), Zero Hour (1957), and A Night to Remember (1958). Through the years the disaster flick has provided action, suspense, and melodrama as unsuspecting individuals get plunged into a race against time. The most recent entry in the genre, Deep Water, combines elements of airline and maritime calamities.
First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) joins Captain Rich (Ben Kingsley) to fly a passenger plane from Los Angeles to Shanghai. A lithium battery in a laptop stored in the cargo hold catches fire and a series of disastrous events follows. The fire spreads, an engine fails, and the plane is forced to set down in the Pacific Ocean.
Unseen by the pilot and co-pilot, a coral reef lurks beneath the water. The plane crashes on the reef and gets ripped to pieces. Captain Rich is killed and Ben has to take charge and try to keep himself and the survivors alive. The plane’s tail section winds up on part of the reef. The survivors can do nothing but watch the water rise. The front section remains afloat, at least for a while, those survivors huddled together with Ben.
Deep Water homes in on various passengers and flight crew members. Some display heroism. Most are frightened and look to Ben for guidance. One, a chain-smoking, selfish complainer, irritates everyone else with his constant accusations and becomes an impediment to the group’s survival.
Of the 257 passengers, we’re told that only 30 survived. With no radio contact, no food, no water, and the inevitable sinking of the remaining parts of the plane, the outcome for the survivors looks hopeless even when they come together to follow Ben’s instructions.
Director Renny Harlin navigated watery disaster previously in Deep Blue Sea. Though Deep Water is derivative of many earlier disaster pictures, it has a brisk pace, lots of action, and a decent performance by Eckhart. Little back story is provided for the characters, so it’s difficult to see them as people rather than types.
In the third act, another danger arises—sharks. Swimming around the wreckage with the survivors holding on for dear life, the sharks seem to know that dinner is at hand. Exceptional CGI work has created some exciting shark sequences that rank among the best in modern disaster films. Harlin shocks the viewer with some, since they occur in quieter moments. The sharks look real. They’re fast. There’s lots of blood. Filming from the point of view of the sharks looking up toward dangling legs and flailing arms adds enormous tension and is reminiscent of memorable shark point-of-view shots in Jaws.
Watching Deep Water, which didn’t fare well at the box office, I was surprised at how good it is. Masterfully edited by Geoff Lamb, it has a tight script with no perfunctory “Hollywoodisms,” such as male and female leads with a prickly relationship learning to appreciate each other as they try to resolve a crisis. The structure is familiar, but the film has a number of unexpected twists.
Kingsley is on screen for a brief time maybe for some marquee insurance. He brings some gravitas to the role of the captain, a sort of aging playboy who snaps into competent command when the need arises. Once the plane is in the ocean, his leg is pinned down and he cannot move. The responsibility of taking charge falls to Ben.
Deep Water is very much in the B-picture tradition but its production value is strong due to extensive outdoor filming and realistic special effects. You may have quibbles the film raises about an airplane hull’s buoyancy or how a relatively small fire would bring down a passenger aircraft, but then there’d be no movie. All films take dramatic license, and this one will definitely keep you involved.
Deep Water was captured by director of photography D.J. Stipsen digitally. He and director Renny Harlin used different cameras with spherical lenses, shifting purposely from longer to wider lenses. The film begins with long lenses to capture warm, low sunlight and natural flares through the plane windows. As the emergency takes hold, wider lenses alter the perspective. Actors are more tightly framed, creating a claustrophobic feel. Camera rigs were designed to transition above and below the water line to show two different perspectives at once. Actors were filmed at eye level in water tanks to accentuate the vulnerability of the characters.
The soundtrack is English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. English SDH subtitles are an option. Dialogue is clear and distinct even though some actors speak from the water. Before the plane crash, the camera zooms from afar to zero in on the suitcase where a laptop’s battery overheats. We hear a sizzling sound when flames emerge from the laptop. During the crash, there are explosions, the plane hitting the ocean, metal tearing, people screaming, and water rushing into the plane’s cabin. Later, there are muffled underwater voices, moaning, crying, heavy breathing of survivors, and objects bobbing in the ocean. The shark attacks are quiet and sudden and sometimes involve two or more sharks surrounding a floundering survivor. Other sound effects include a helicopter’s rotor blades, a fishing boat’s fog horn, and the plane’s slowly cracking windshield.
There are no bonus materials on this Blu-ray release from Magenta Light Studios.
Deep Water devotes most of its energy to the crash and its aftermath. Little information is provided about the passengers, but Renny Harlin and screenwriters Shayne Armstrong and S.P. Krause create and sustain tension effectively. Aaron Eckhart is serviceable as First Officer Ben in a sketchily written role. This isn’t the kind of film from which to expect psychological portraits of the main characters. The point is to create a fast pace, provide lots of action and suspense and engage the viewer. Deep Water succeeds at all three.
- Dennis Seuling