On Shark In Venice

Well, let’s try one of the many ‘here’s a movie about a shark in this place, and how you know is because of the title’ films.

This was the best picture of the cover I could find.

Traveling to Venice to investigate his father’s mysterious death, famous archaeologist and diver David (Stephen Baldwin) unearths a killer secret that lies beneath the Venetian waters.

It’s so funny to me when I watch these movies with the weird, early 2000s opening credits. The weird music, weird fonts, everything about it just made me laugh. Stephen Baldwin being in this film made me laugh even harder. Scuba diving in Venice’s canals is apparently a thing, at least with this film — let me give you a bit of a play by play as to what happened in this wild movie. As always, spoiler alert. I’m watching these so you don’t have to, I swear. Just read my synopsis.

Sometimes I really like movies that start you in the middle of things, don’t get me wrong. With this one, though, I didn’t get much context. It starts us with divers looking for something under Venice — not sure what, at first, but all we know at this point is that some fashionable man with quite a bit of hair wants whatever they’re finding. By the time we’re seven and a half minutes in, we’ve seen three shark deaths and found out that these divers are looking for some sorts of artifacts — and this is the kind of shark movie I like, so far! Give me the senseless violence. Even if, for some reason, Mr. Lots-of-hair doesn’t want anyone to know anything about the sharks under Venice, there’s plenty of violence and I’m here for it.

We cut very suddenly to Stephen Baldwin lecturing in what seems to be his classroom about the SS Andrea Doria. Besides the fact that he’s got a slideshow clicker for bits that look like they’re right out of a movie, the lecture is at least remotely educational, so we’ll let it slide. We find out that his father was in the initial scene and is missing, and we also find out that the other mens’ dead bodies were found relatively quickly through a sea of dramatic cuts and odd face stabilizations. Baldwin gets quite a few Zoolander-esque Blue Steel moments, and you see very quickly that this man has one emotion through this entire film — vaguely nauseated. In all of this, we also find out that the Venetian police want nothing to do with sharks in the water, because, and I quote, “We don’t have sharks in Venice.” Quickly, this movie seems to be turning into some sort of government conspiracy.

Finally, 16 minutes in, we find out his father was working on some sort of ‘underwater excavation’ — I only say ‘finally’ because the movie seems a little out of order. But then the tone changes ENTIRELY, and suddenly the movie is a little bit of an over dramatized History Channel show. You know the ones. Dramatic re-enactments with a strangely deep voice over the top. With that segment the tone of the movie completely changed. It was almost like the channel was changed mid-film, honestly, but it also gave some much needed context. The strange segment finally offers that the treasure they’re looking for under Venice was treasure that Louie the 14th hid there, and both his father and the fashionable man with quite a bit of hair wanted it.

Of course, also, Baldwin and a woman who is initially just shown as a teacher but quickly is revealed to be his fiance are both the exact experts the movie needs; Baldwin is an expert on underwater excavations and his fiance(who conveniently insisted on going with him) is an expert on medieval times(She likely teaches it). How much plot armor does one movie get?

After quite a bit of strange acting, a Great White shark that attacks both Baldwin’s character and the rest of his crew, a poorly placed Aqua Lung product placement, and some strange little plot holes Baldwin’s character is already in the chamber that his father wanted to find, taking an emerald and stuffing it in his scuba suit in the process. Mind you, this is 33 minutes into the movie.

33 minutes.

If you’re like me, you’re asking yourself what can the rest of this film be because — I’m serious — this movie is an hour and a half long. You would think that him getting the treasure and leaving Venice would be it, but nope — there’s a whole lot more movie to deal with.

Baldwin’s character ends up out for two days after he was attacked and dreamed about the shark attacking him all over again. He woke up and had a police officer — let’s call him Wish.Com Antonio Banderas, because admittedly, I can’t remember his name — tell him very pointedly that he shouldn’t tell anyone about the sharks, and that he should just go home. His fiance’s there, too, and she agrees that they’re just going to go home, and in the process she talks about how his dad is actually dead. Now, I’m not sure when that happened, exactly, because the last mention of him had him missing, not dead, but either way it seems that everything is terrible, his dad’s dead, and he needs to leave.

But does he leave? Absolutely not. Because the man with all of the hair has returned, and we find out that this man is none other than Don Clemenza, the don of the mafia. He wants more treasure after he’s taken the emerald that Baldwin’s character snagged when he was in there the first time, and he’s offering him 20 million dollars to do it with a two million dollar advance. He refuses, initially, though not without his fiance making sure he’s definitely going to refuse, and after two more shark attacks with a terribly CGI’ed shark, I’ve got a bit of whiplash from the way this movie can’t really choose a plot.

After two MORE shark attacks, there’s another weird History Channel-like sightseeing montage, and by this point I’m convinced that this film is just to teach people about Venice. The mafia takes his fiance after this montage to make him go back into the tunnels, and once he goes to the Venetian lieutenant to report what’s going on she kind of shrugs it off, seemingly because they think he’s working with the mafia as well.

We get another shark attack — this time with a shark taking out an entire gondola, with witnesses — but the news are just calling it a ‘rash of missing persons cases.’ This film seems to be centered around this government conspiracy that there are no sharks in Venice, which is strange, to say the least.

Baldwin’s character, at this point, is now being kept an eye on by the Venetian police, but suddenly there’s people with zip lines coming into his hotel room in the middle of the night. I’m figuring it’s the mafia, by this point. Even though there was a police officer stationed outside of his room who was supposed to be keeping an eye on him, he escapes the room and a long chase scene with multiple blue steel moments ensues. Ultimately, the masked men are thwarted with a strangely slow fight sequence which seems artificially padded out to make the movie longer, and the part that made me laugh the most was a very Batman ‘WHERE IS SHE’ performance with a table saw on one of the masked men he managed to catch.

Baldwin, after finding out where she is, is off to find his fiance, but not before another long, drawn out chase scene. There’s a lot of weird motorcycle tricks, some odd sequences, and then magically he’s on a boat and finds her with little to no dots being connected as to how it happened.

The last half hour of the movie is strangely sped up, almost as if they wanted to hit particular points while they only had a certain amount of time left, sequencing and context be damned. In this last half hour, we find out in the ultimate twist that Don Clemenza put the sharks in the water from the start and the Venetian lieutenant that Baldwin’s been dealing with was in on it. It’s like a very bad James Bond film, but at the same time, it’s strangely entertaining.

Baldwin’s character goes back in to get more treasure, and after yet another shark attack there’s another drawn out fight because Clemenza sent a man in with him to just kill him once he got the location of the vault. More men are sent in, and they’re all killed as well in assorted ways. The Venetian lieutenant ends up getting shot (she shows up and reveals that she was working with the mafia the entire time, too) and Baldwin’s fiance ends up with a gun while everybody, very suddenly, is getting killed. The ending’s just as wild as the way the action ramps up in the first place, because (I suppose) there’s only ten minutes left in the movie and they haven’t had enough action yet, so they have to hit the last points that they want to hit.

There’s a final gunfight and Clemenza gets fed to a shark at the end of it all. The lieutenant (who was working for him but changed her mind) was also shot, but she’ll eventually be fine. With a humorous one-liner at the end after being reminded about the lack of sharks in Venice (We will not honeymoon in Venice!) the movie zooms out, cuts to black, and this wild ride is over. You’ll have to forgive the length of this play-by-play — there was just too much not to cover! What an odd movie.

I will say this film is not part of the Pretty Girl in a Bikini Gets Eaten By a Shark era, which is nice — it was definitely different but I was actually reasonably entertained. I also wasn’t quite sure if this was all just bad green screen or if most of this film was actually filmed in Venice. I’ll give it a 6/10, nothing to write home about but definitely better than the last couple! It took itself too seriously, as most of these films are wont to do, but at the same time at least it was a respectable amount of too serious.

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