Jaws (1975)

Jaws (1975) is a horror/thriller film by Steven Spielberg. This film is an adaptation from the novel by the same name by Peter Benchley and is the movie that put Spielberg’s name on the map. The film is about an enormous great white shark that goes around killing the swimming community of Amity Island and is up to Sherriff Brody (Roy Scheider) to put a stop to the shark while keeping the people of Amity safe. When the shark first strikes the mayor of Amity doesn’t want to listen to Brody about shutting down the beach because it’s summer season and it’s their biggest tourist time of the year. Brody reluctantly decides to not shut down the beach and then another person is killed by the shark which is when a bounty is put on the shark and it sparks a hunt with everyone from amateurs to professional hunters going after the beast. In an interesting twist, Sheriff Brody is the sheriff of an island, but is terrified of going into the water, but the shark makes Brody leave his comfort zone and enter the waters of Amity to track down the beast and kill it.

Jaws was an amazing film and due to problems with the animatronic shark malfunctioning we didn’t see the shark for the first hour of the film, but instead we had the camera swimming around the ocean giving us the shark’s point of view. We saw what the shark saw which made the shark even more terrifying because we didn’t know if we were dealing with a hammerhead shark or a great white shark. The score for this film was terrific, the “dun-dun-dun-dun” went perfectly with the shark and to this day remains an amazing piece. Everyone who has watched Jaws associates that piece of music with danger. The camera shots were incredibly done especially when the shark attacks one of the little boys, the camera does an amazing close up of Brody’s reaction. This film had every aspect of being a B-Type movie, from the ridiculously large shark, the fact that we didn’t see it until an hour into the film, but in the end it turned out to be one of Spielberg’s biggest masterpieces.

Spielberg did an amazing job in this film given the fact that it went over budget, it went over its shooting schedule, and problems kept arising. This film will go down as one of the greatest films in the 20^th century and I highly recommend it to anyone to go see it.