The Meg (2018)
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
I first recall seeing Jason Statham all the back in 1998, in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and he’s proved to be an enduring and (mostly) perfectly serviceable screen presence. Like Dwayne Johnson, he seems to be aware of his limitations as an actor and plays to his strengths – he wears a suit very well and is certainly one of the best screen action men – but he is wasted in this dreadfully sad excuse of a film. It seems they were aiming to generate the tension of Jaws (1975) but lacked the ammunition to do so.
Sadly, this even missed multiple opportunities to be “so bad it’s good”, with awful dialogue, a pedestrian and predictable plot, standard ho-hum character tropes, at times very dodgy CG and not even a single helicopter getting eaten by a monster shark. I was very disappointed.
On the upside, I’ve seen the trailer for Hobbs and Shaw, which is due for release in August and that looks an infinitely better vehicle for Statham. I’m really glad I didn’t go and see The Meg in the cinema, waiting until it came out on Amazon Prime. Nevertheless, it’s almost two hours of my life I won’t get back.
Debra Manskey 