"When a massive killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Long Island, it's up to the local police chief, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down." 

OUR REFLECTION:

There is not too much more that can be said about Steven Spielberg's preeminent blockbuster that hasn’t already been chomped away at for the past 50 years. Jaws has been swimming around in pop culture circles since its debut in June of 1975 giving those bad ass sharks an even crueler rep while keeping bathers safely away from oceans, bays, sounds, ponds, lakes, swimming pools, and tubs.

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The legend of Jaws has grown in those decades as well. The difficulties Spielberg and his crew had shooting on the water, the cold weather, delays, and a malfunctioning shark. Yet the result was not only pure movie magic but a sustainable, eminently re-watchable movie masterpiece that gave birth to the term “blockbuster” and remains the crown bearer of that title.

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Universal, the studio known for its classic movie monsters (where else would a killer shark feel at home?), re-released the movie in celebration of its release with a digital remastering that is as bright and perfect as a summer day on Amity Island.

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Jaws, of course, tells the tale of a killer great white - a rogue shark that brings chaos in like the tide swamping the peaceful if set-in-their-ways beach community of Amity right in time for the Independence Day weekend. After eating a young woman, a little boy, and even a dog, Sheriff Brody (Roy Schneider) and marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) hire the grizzled World War II Navy vet Quint (Robert Shaw) to hunt the creature. Quint, however, sails with Captain Ahab-sized baggage and sees this particular fishing expedition as a holy crusade.

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Chum alert: Not everyone survives either. But what has lived on is the movie itself. Spielberg fills his movie with quotable dialogue, sensational characters, and scenes of Hollywood magic that have engulphed fans in waves of pure pleasure. 

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The 50th Anniversary remaster is absolutely gorgeous and fills the movie screen with blue skies, green waters, and beady black eyes. There is a scene where Quint stands at the bow of the ship watching Brody and Hooper flop around on the wet deck following their first shark encounter. Shaw smiles broadly. The Orca bobs along. And the skies behind slowly shift from blue to gray to orange. The shot is both simplistic and masterful. Just like the movie.

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Jaws remarkably holds up culturally speaking. True, there are no people of color in significant roles and the only female lead, Brody’s wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary), is only, and minorly, in the first half of the movie sequestered away at home with the boys. Still, this movie is the consummate man vs beast story. And the men within represent various, believable, archetypes: Quint is strong and stubborn and hurt; Brody is wise and sure yet suffers from imposter syndrome; Hooper is goofy and smart and arrogant. The script by author Peter Benchley cleverly avoids the three from falling into cliché.

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The film, now deeply in the zeitgeist, has become its own archetype. Yet it deserves to be seen in the theater. Jaws is still a movie where you might need… a bigger screen.