Canadian nature photographer Rob Stewart has been swimming with sharks since childhood, indulging his passion for the misunderstood 'dinosaurs of the ocean". He thought he was making a straightforward marine documentary when he began production on Sharkwater eight years prior to its completion, but it is a beautiful accident that Stewart has found his way into the starring role of this directorial debut. His infectious zeal is at the centre of an eye-opening, enlivening and totally must-see film spectacle.
Far from camera-gazing at 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, Sharkwater packs a propulsive narrative punch as the deep-toned Stewart aligns himself with conservationist Paul Watson, a Greenpeace co-founder who now polices the high seas. Watson takes on illegal fishing boats in international waters with his own renegade ship, outfitted with a steel ram called the 'can-opener". The pair heads into Costa Rican waters only to uncover clandestine involvement by the Taiwanese mafia in a multibillion dollar shark-finning trade. It is pulse-quickening stuff in the style of a pulpy actioner as local authorities, and pirates, bay for Stewart’s blood, even as the laconic filmmaker dispatches alarming statistics to camera about long-line fishing.
Sharkwater uses simple statistics to undo the harm done to the name of sharks by Steven Spielberg’s indelible Jaws. Only five people a year die from shark attacks – making the underwater 'predator" positively benign when compared to lions or elephants, and even compared to falling soft drink machines! An uplifting score from Jeff Rona perfectly complements Stewart’s lush, eye-filling underwater lensing, but it’s the filmmaker’s contagious passion for saving an unfairly maligned creature that is the real beauty of this far-from-dry doc.
Filmink 4/5
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