Into The Blue

How important are your morals? What kind of priority do friends and loved ones hold in your life? If someone offered you ten million dollars, would you consider violating your conscience (at least temporarily), changing friends, or giving up on those you love? Jared (Paul Walker) and Sam (Jessica Alba) have to make these decisions in “Into the Blue.”

The two live on love and little else. They own a fixer upper house and a boat that has more water in it than out of it. Sam works at a local aquarium doing shark shows, but in their free time they dive for treasure. Jared’s brother, Bryce (Scott Caan), shows up with his newest girlfriend, Amanda (Ashley Scott). Soon after their arrival the foursome make a couple of important finds during a free-dive. They find some remains of a ship thought to be a myth (and supposedly loaded with millions in gold). They also found the wreck of a cargo plane full of cocaine.

These treasure hunting divers face two problems, however. They don’t have the finances or equipment needed to prove they have a right-of-claim on the ship wreckage, and if they report the cargo plane, the authorities will cordon off the area, thus ending their dig. Jared wants to report the plane’s whereabouts and cargo to authorities, but his brother has other plans. He and Amanda want to bring up some of the cocaine and sell it to finance their other recovery.

The rest of the movie is fairly predictable. Jared and Sam have a falling out for awhile. Bryce and Amanda’s plan doesn’t go quite as planned, and in the end everyone has to work together to save an innocent party. “Into the Blue” wasn’t more creative because the purpose of the movie had nothing to do with the script. As a matter of fact, much of the movie was simply people swimming underwater with no conversation at all.

The “friends are more important than money” theme would have made a great movie in its own right, but evidently the movie makers weren’t so sure. It seems they wanted to push the limits to see how much skin they could show and still have a PG-13 rating. They make a spoof at the beginning of the movie by picturing a woman who appears to be at least 200 lbs over her ideal weight. The fact that she’s wearing a skimpy bikini brought giggles and groans from those at the theatre.

Sam and Amanda wear bikinis or underwear throughout a good share of the film. There’s no way to count how many times the cameraman zoomed in on the butt or cleavage of these two female actresses. In one scene, Amanda is sunbathing with just her briefs on. The shot is from behind so nothing else is shown. When the authorities arrive, she greets them topless, but since the camera shot is still from behind only, the side of one breast is seen. The only sex scenes in the movie included passionate kissing only.

There are 25 obscenities spoken, as well as 10 uses of God’s name. This doesn’t include the multiple uses of innuendo which peppered the film. This may seem light to some, but since several scenes had no conversation, it becomes quite frequent.

There were several beautiful camera sweeps of reefs and aquatic life. Jared and Sam also stayed true to their convictions, opposing illegal drugs—even to their detriment. In spite of these positives, I wouldn’t recommend seeing “Into the Blue.” It just isn’t worth watching.

Violence: Heavy / Profanity: Moderate / Sex/Nudity: Heavy

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