Rob Stewart really loves sharks. In fact, he thinks sharks are “perfect” in just about every way. When we first find Rob, he’s holding a shark in a loving embrace and it appears as though the shark would rather be just about anywhere else. Nevertheless, the passion of Stewart is apparent from the opening frames of Sharkwater.
Right off the bat, it should be noted that this doc is not about sharks. It’s about Rob Stewart. Sure, he tries to dispel some myths that people have about sharks in the first half hour or so. Rob tells us that movies like Jaws and the numerous “media” portrayals of sharks are wrong. He exclaims that sharks “don’t eat people” and calms us by adding that people who die from shark incidents “die because of blood loss.” Phew!
There’s sadly little to like about Sharkwater. The underwater photography is pretty neat, although it really doesn’t provide anything above standard National Geographic fare. Shots of Stewart swimming with the sharks are actually rather sparse in the 90-minute runtime, while shots of Stewart and some goons from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society seem to dominate things.
Stewart teams up with the Conservation Society and its founder, Paul Watson, after discovering that all of the sharks in the areas he used to swim in were gone. It couldn’t be that those sharks had migrated, as they do every year. Of course, Stewart spends little time actually telling us about sharks so we wouldn’t know, either. When he does provide some facts, they’re pretty broad: “If sharks ate people, I would have been eaten by now.”
Stewart’s journey to save the sharks takes him to part of Asia where they’re considered delicacies. He also hitches his wagon to Watson and makes his way to Costa Rica, where their crew tries to head off another ship of shark poachers. Watson’s boat rams the other vessel and sprays it down with water, trying to force it to sink or land or whatever. This goes on for quite some time and sets up the tone for the rest of the film, as we’re suddenly dealing with the rousing life of a rebel environmentalist and the sharks are nowhere to be found.
Article comments
1 - Andy Sayers
Undoubtedly, the biggest problem with this movie is the fact that Rob Stewart is an uncontrollable douche.
Still, it's an interesting issue he presents and I felt the photography was better than decent. I recommend the movie for those reasons, but warn that Stewart will test your patience.
2 - Jordan Richardson
Part of the reason that I was down on the photography was that I had just watched a section of the phenomenal Planet Earth series and the photography in that series, as well as in most Discovery channel series' and most National Geographic specials, makes Stewart's stuff looking very average.
Also, while he does "raise" an interesting issue, he simply abandons it too soon and too often to make any significant impact. It seemed that Stewart simply didn't care enough about sharks, as hard as that may be to believe, to present solid facts about them and their importance. The case he makes in the film simply isn't solid enough for it to be worthwhile.
3 - Andy Sayers
Fair enough. I saw Sharkwater before I started watching Planet Earth (which I'm watching now, whereas I saw the former in theatre), so maybe it wouldn't play as well in comparison.