With: Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Bo Derek, Will Sampson, Robert Carradine
Plot: When a fisherman (Harris), accidentally kills a pregnant killer whale, its mate stalks after the guilty crew, apparrently overcome with desire for vengeance.
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For the most part this fits the bill of 'mildly diverting Jaws rip-off', but it's strangely interesting in places. The opening whale death is particularly drawn out and harrowing (If it were a human it would be worse than Hostel), and the repeated insistence (from marine biologist Rampling) that the Orca husband is on a killing spree of passion and revenge, while ridiculous, does eventually get under your skin, with all the sad close-ups of whale eyes, and scenes of Harris' mental state in tatters, you certainly don't need to get to the ending to know whose side the filmmakers are on. This stuff is more interesting to think about than to watch though, and eventually the film sinks to pure macho-mysticism as we are to believe the whale and Harris are having some cross-species war of gentleman. Despite some silly bits (Orca manages to drag an entire house into the sea and later confusingly manages to explode a whole village), the action material is solid, with some amazing whale footage and a surprising taste for dismemberment. They should get Renny Harlin to remake it. Seriously!
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