Jaws
Reviewed by: Eric Paddon
CONTRIBUTOR
| Moral Rating: | Average |
| Moviemaking Quality: |
|
| Primary Audience: | Young Teen to Adult |
| Genre: | Action Suspense Horror Adaptation |
| Length: | 2 hr. 4 min. |
| Year of Release: | 1975 |
| USA Release: |
June 20, 1975 (wide release) |
| Featuring |
|---|
| Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton |
| Director |
|
Steven Spielberg |
| Producer |
|
David Brown Richard D. Zanuck |
| Distributor |
“Jaws,” the familiar story of a small New England town terrorized by a killer great white shark, remains to this day the greatest work of director Steven Spielberg. Instead of doing what a less talented director might have done and make it a vulgar horror film, Spielberg instead went for the more effective blend of unseen terror mixed with grand adventure. Coupled with outstanding performances from Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, and a memorable John Williams score, the end results are cinema magic.
There is some violence in the film, though not enough to make one question the film’s PG rating (it would probably be PG-13 though by today’s standards). A handful of profane words permeate and the salty fisherman Quint (Shaw) does use Christ’s name in vain at various points.
On the plus side though, Spielberg is to be commended for cleaning up the dirty aspects of Peter Benchley’s novel which inspired this movie. Unlike the novel, Chief Brody (Scheider) and his wife are happily married and deeply in love (in the novel she has an afternoon tryst with the Hooper character), and the film’s violence far less graphic than what the book described.
The book gave us selfish people who were difficult to sympathize with, while by contrast the movie gives us characters you’re glad to root for (even Quint, who gives a powerful speech about why he has a vendetta against sharks, stemming from his WWII experience surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. This inspired touch wasn’t in the book either).
- Violence: Heavy and sometimes bloody images; woman’s hand missing a finger, and it turns up on the beach; investigator with corpse gives graphic description of how woman was killed by shark; person looks at shark victim photos scarred from missing chunks of flesh
- Profane language: Heavy— “For Chr*st’s sake” (3), “Jesus Christ” (2), “J*sus H Chr*st” (2), “J*sus” (2), “G*d d*mn” (4), Bloody
- Vulgar/Crude language: “Son of a b*tch” (5), “B*stard” (3), S-word (few), “Cr*p” (3), “A**” (5),
- Nudity: Woman goes skinny-dipping at night, not graphic. However, in the 4K remastered edition, her body is seen more clearly.
- Sex: None, but a man sings a rhyme “For fifteen years she kept her virginity, not a bad record for this vicinity.”
- Drugs/Alcohol: Character fills tumbler with wine and later shows at little sign of being under the influence; People smoke; Teens pass around a marijuana joint and drink; 3 men drinking on boat appear to be drunk
- Occult: none
- Wokeism: none
Morality-wise, Jaws is not for young or sensitive people, obviously. The only reason it’s PG is because the rating system didn’t have a PG-13 back then, which it would fall squarely into today. But it’s not as gratuitous with its violence, language, or sexual content as other films that followed. There’s no huge moral or inspiring message the movie tries to get across. But there are little things that prove the film has a moral compass, such as how the main characters are doing everything in their power to warn others of the shark and catch it before it can harm others, even if the mayor would prefer they just forget about it for the summer dollars. None of the good guys do anything for they’re own benefit, and the bad characters serve as an object lesson on how willful negligence and greed can lead to very tragic ends.
Still, the violence the movie does have, even if not pervasive or extreme enough for an R rating, does get pretty disturbing at times with plenty of blood, the shark munching on people, and severed limbs. There’s no sexual content. There is some immodesty at the beach, but nothing too huge. There is arguably some nudity at the start of the film with the skinny-dipping woman as the shark’s first victim, but it’s so dark out that her body’s only visible in silhouette, so it’s tough to make out anything that could be seen as pornographic. Language is a little rough, though, with various, though not terribly frequent, uses of the “s-word”, “*ss”, “b*st*rd, ” “b*tch, ” and inappropriate (and occasionally abusive) uses of God and Jesus Christ’s names (including several “g*dd*mn“s). There is also one unfinished “SOB” phrase near the end of the film. And there’s also a scene near the film’s start where some people are passing around and smoking weed, though a lot of viewers will probably miss it.
All in all, Jaws is not a film for everyone. There is everything from blood to limbs to language that would rightfully keep young or sensitive viewers away. But for those who can stomach those issues (and they’re honestly not as bad as they could’ve been, all things considered, as the movie relies more on terror to create fear than gore), this is quite the shark feature you can sink your teeth into. It’s terrifying, well-directed, has a great score, and has great characters who make the film engaging no matter how many times you watch it. What more could you ask from a movie about a few dudes trying to hunt down a murderous shark?
Moral rating: Average / Moviemaking quality: 5