Horror Extreme Movie Catalog - Editorial Reviews

Spielberg pits three mena against a great white shark that has been attacking swimmers at an island resort in new england. The film redefined the word blockbuster and john williams score still haunts swimmers around the world. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 05/23/2006 Starring: Roy Scheider Richard Dreyfuss Run time: 125 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Steven Spielberg

In the vastly overrated 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind puts the blame for Hollywood's blockbuster mentality at least partially on Steven Spielberg's box-office success with this adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel. But you can't blame Spielberg for making a terrific movie, which Jaws definitely is. The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley's book and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on Shaw's boat--as the three of them realize that in fact the shark is hunting them--are what entertaining moviemaking is all about. --Marshall Fine