Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is a sensationally effective action picture. It’s a scary thriller that works because its characters feel like real human beings. We get to know them, and we care about them. It’s as frightening as “The Exorcist,” yet somehow more fun. Being scared by an outdoor adventure feels nicer than brimstone-and-vomit devil horror.
The story involves shark attacks on swimmers at a resort island. The community struggles with the threat to its tourist trade. Finally, three men set out to track the shark and kill it. There are no doubt supposed to be deeper meanings in such an archetypal story, but Spielberg wisely ignores them. This is an action film content to stay within its story. No character has to wade through speeches about the significance of it all. Still, Spielberg is very good at making each character feel like a distinct individual.
Before the three men board that leaky old boat, we know them well. We’re genuinely curious how each will respond to danger. Brody (Roy Scheider) is the police chief who left New York hoping to escape city fear. Quint (Robert Shaw) is the crusty old sea salt with a deeply personal hatred of sharks. Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) is the rich kid turned oceanographer. He knows exactly what a shark can do to a man, and gets in the water anyway.
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All three performances are really fine. Scheider plays the character most of us identify with. He’s scared of the water and doesn’t like to swim. When the giant shark glides past the boat for the first time, we believe him completely: “We need a bigger boat.” Shaw plays Quint with cheerful exaggeration, stomping around like a cross between Captain Queeg and Captain Hook. Then he delivers a gripping five-minute monologue about the sinking of the Indianapolis. He was one of over a thousand men in the water. By the time rescue came, sharks had killed two-thirds of them.
The most inspired casting choice is Richard Dreyfuss as the oceanographer. He made this film after playing the ruthlessly ambitious title character in “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.” Here he’s young, engaging, and scholarly. He introduces the technical material about sharks in a way that deepens our primal fear of them.
Then there’s the shark itself. Some footage uses a real great white. The rest relies on a mechanical shark built to match. The illusion is total. We see it up close. We look into its relentless eye. It just plain feels like a shark.
Jaws is a great adventure movie of a kind we rarely get anymore. It’s clean-cut adventure, free of gratuitous violence. It has exactly the blood and guts it needs — nothing more. And it’s one hell of a good story, brilliantly told.
