{"id":558095,"date":"2026-04-30T04:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558095\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T04:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:05:12","slug":"aaron-eckhart-in-renny-harlin-disaster-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558095\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Eckhart in Renny Harlin Disaster Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cOne tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense!\u201d That tagline from 1974\u2019s\u00a0The Towering Inferno could easily have been slapped on Renny Harlin<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Deep Water. Maybe combined with \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Go in the Water Again!\u201d from\u00a0Jaws<\/a>. Even\u00a0The Poseidon Adventure\u2019s classic \u201cHell, upside down!\u201d might apply to a scene or two. While the director\u2019s last studio hit, 1999\u2019s\u00a0Deep Blue Sea, shares shark DNA, the new thriller\u2019s roots are deeply embedded in 1970s disaster movies, not least the truly dreadful\u00a0Airport \u201977. Or as dreadful as any movie featuring screen divinity Lee Grant and Brenda Vaccaro can be.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven that the cutoff age in America for commercial airline pilots is 65, eyebrows might be raised by making 82-year-old Ben Kingsley<\/a> the captain on a flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Would\u00a0you board? Rich is a failed husband still hitting on the ladies by crooning \u201cFly Me to the Moon\u201d in karaoke bars, so it\u2019s no wonder the plane goes down. But that exciting crash sequence \u2014 from initial turbulence through to catastrophic Pacific Ocean landing \u2014 is where high-stakes action specialist Harlin is most firmly in his sweet spot.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDeep Water\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tDiverting enough for a gnarly mashup.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, May 1
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Angus Sampson, Li Wenhan, Lucy Barrett, Molly Belle Wright, Richard Croughley, Na Shi, Ryan Bown, Zhao Simei, Kate Fitzpatrick, Lakota Johnson, Madeleine West, Kelly Gale, Elijah Tamati
Director:\u00a0Renny Harlin
Screenwriters: Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, SP Krause, Damien Power, John Kim
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 46 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe prelude in a screenplay that took four writers \u2014\u00a0Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, SP Krause and Damien Power,\u00a0plus a fifth, John Kim, for additional input, presumably with the Chinese characters \u2014 is struck directly from the \u201870s template. Once it kicks into gear, the story could almost be told in emojis:\u00a0\u2708\ufe0f\ud83d\udd25\ud83d\ude31\ud83c\udf0a\ud83e\udd88\ud83e\udd88\ud83e\udd88\ud83d\udca9.<\/p>\n

\n\tA bunch of stock characters are given one-dimensional introductions, led by Aaron Eckhart<\/a>\u2019s Ben, a first officer whose failure to make captain by now might have something to do with hot-headedness in his Air Force days. A flawed hero with a firmly clenched jaw, he\u2019s also caught in a bind of needing to make money to cover his young son\u2019s cancer treatment but also possibly using the job to flee responsibility, leaving his desperate wife to deal with the anxiety alone.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe passengers include the requisite obnoxious jerk, Dan (Angus Sampson), already throwing his weight around and breaking no-smoking rules at LAX. We watch him stuff a glitchy charging device into his check-in luggage and then we follow his suitcase onto the conveyor belt and into the cargo hold, which doesn\u2019t bode well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a blended family, including kids Cora (Molly Belle Wright) and the younger stepbrother she barely tolerates, Finn (Elijah Tamati), and their frisky parents Declan (Ryan Bown) and Jaya (Kelly Gale). The couple disappears early in the flight to join the Mile High Club, leaving the children unattended, so in movie-morality logic, we can assume they\u2019re toast. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe same appears to be true of douchey athlete Hutch (Lakota Johnson), whose aggressive behavior with Lilly (Zhao Simei) pisses off Sam (Li Wenhan), captain of the Esports team returning from a video gamer tournament. Official team rules prohibit them from dating, but you just know that near-death experiences are going to make these lovebirds take the plunge. Also because the Chinese co-financing requires it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAustralian screen and stage veteran Kate Fitzpatrick plays Becky, a feisty grandmother whose role is so familiar that her banter with geeky Matt across the aisle (Richard Croughley) will later include him good-naturedly dropping a Shelley Winters reference. That\u2019s about it for the characters we need to care much about, though I would have liked to see more of tough but tender vet Martine (Madeleine West).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe key cabin crew are flight attendants Penny (Lucy Barrett) and Zoe (Na Shi), both of whom demonstrate bravery, to different ends, and show caring attention to the terrified children.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cause of the plane\u2019s malfunctions is, duh, random sparks from annoying Dan\u2019s charger starting a fire in cargo. Harlin rediscovers some of his old\u00a0Die Hard 2\u00a0vigor in the dizzying acceleration of violence as faulty equipment and then crew are unable to contain the blaze, gas canisters start ricocheting through the cabin ripping a hole in the fuselage, hand luggage goes flying and the drinks cart contents turn lethal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAny passengers not knocked out during the chaos or sucked out into the sky are generally screaming and grabbing for oxygen masks while Captain Rich makes a futile announcement about the importance of not panicking. This is basically every aerophobic flier\u2019s worst nightmare, and Harlin does a solid job of maintaining the fear factor and shock right up to the moment of Rich\u2019s decision to dump fuel and ditch, since the nearest airport, Guam, is out of range.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director again shows his action smarts by creating a brief lull \u2014 albeit while leaning hard on one of the more sudsy passages of composer\u00a0Fernando Vel\u00e1zquez\u2019s generic score \u2014 before the next shuddering impact sends the number of casualties skyrocketing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plane hitting the water is destructive enough without the help of a jagged coral reef (improbably far from any coastline) slicing through the aircraft\u2019s undercarriage. By the time Ben looks around at the floating wreckage, he estimates that of the 257 souls on board, maybe 30 survived. That number will keep shrinking as vicious mako sharks start picking off passengers while they pray to be rescued.<\/p>\n

\n\tConsidering how much Harlin dialed up the shark mayhem in the ridiculous but toothsome B-movie\u00a0Deep Blue Sea, the bloodletting and severed limbs here are a tad routine for the genre \u2014 dorsal fins slicing the water; floating passengers circled and suddenly yanked under; pools of blood forming when unfortunate folks try swimming to relative safety; bursts of thrashing; and some scary underwater shots. It\u2019s no\u00a0Jaws, obviously, but sharksploitation addicts will have seen much worse, and the film will do fine once it lands on streaming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe focus narrows in on the remaining passengers and crew in the main sections of the aircraft not blown to bits, the cockpit and a stretch of the main cabin (finally, a reward for flying coach), precariously perched on a reef outcrop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe human drama tends to veer into corniness, though emotional investment is sufficient to keep you watching, and not paying too much attention to the flat light often left behind by green screen removal. Or to some shaky American accents that keep lapsing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t(The movie was shot in New Zealand and the Canary Islands, and the production led by Australian companies, with much of the secondary cast assembled there. It was initially planned as a sequel to 2012\u2019s sharks-in-a-flooded-supermarket 3D chomper,\u00a0Bait<\/a>, but that version was shelved due to uncomfortable similarities to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile there\u2019s some teasing suspense in how long the odious Dan will be kept alive, it\u2019s not exactly surprising that Ben will have his parental instincts reactivated by Cora\u2019s vulnerability. What\u2019s more unexpected is that Chinese fishermen get to be the good guys.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOne tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense!\u201d That tagline from 1974\u2019s\u00a0The Towering Inferno could easily have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[191686,11128,96,13140,2839,14810,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-558095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-aaron-eckhart","tag-ben-kingsley","tag-entertainment","tag-jaws","tag-movies","tag-renny-harlin","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}