Treasure has its price.

Some incredible underwater footage, beautiful 'eye-candy' (for both the boys and the girls), and an excellent digital transfer can't hide the fact that the plot is tedious, slow and hackneyed, the acting questionable, and the characterisations absurd. Give this one a miss!

Plot Summary

When four young free divers come upon a legendary shipwreck rumoured to contain millions in gold, they believe their dream of buried treasure has come true. But nearby on the ocean floor they unearth another, more sinsister, mystery. The fortune-hunting friends make a pact to keep quiet about both discoveries so they can excavate the shipwreck before a rival treasure hunter discovers their secret and beats them to the gold.

But with so much at stake, their loyalties are tested. Facing hidden dangers at every turn, the hunters suddenly become the hunted.

Film Review

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! On paper this must have seemed a good idea: plane crash action scenes, guns, gangsters, nightclubs full of fashion models, stunning underwater photography, lots of pretty young things appearing in flimsy beach costumes. How could it fail?

The truth is it's a car crash of a movie. The acting is mediocre at best, and the plot is all over the place, using every hackneyed cliche in the book. The 'hero' Jared, played by blue-eyed and pretty Paul Walker, last seen in The Fast and The Furious is, we are supposed to believe, a down-on-his-luck hobo who just lost his job. This is somewhat hard to believe given his stunning girlfriend (played by Jessica Alba, and constantly changing immaculate designer clothing. There's the dumb 'best friend' who treats women like dirt, rats on his friends, gets everyone into trouble, and yet is supposed to be believable as another of 'the good guys'. And then to complete the quartet of 'friends' there's the cookie 'one night stand' girlfriend who seems to be busy chasing anyone with money or wearing trousers. The problem is that not one of the characters is believable or has any kind of characterisation that would make you care about them.

Worse, the so-called 'twists' are sign-posted so large they might as well be flashed in neon over the actor's head. Cool black dudes with guns - heh, I wonder if they're bad guys? White scrawny rich guy with a big boat and lots of money - could he be a bad guy? Well if the British accent doesn't tell you, then I guess nothing will!

Too many of the 'action' scenes take place underwater. With no sound, and a musical score that actually distracts from what's happening on screen, the scenes lose any excitement or tension, and at times the editing is so bad it's impossible to make out who's doing what to who and what the apparent danger is.

The amount of naked flesh on view may be a panacea for some, but at times it comes across as positively seedy. Jessica Alba is made to wear tissue-thin panties that don't have enough material to cover a 10 pence coin, let alone the lower part of her anatomy - it all feels like a rather bad alternative to a soft porn movie! The director may talk about a 'great action movie' but it's clear from the packaging that the DVD is all about selling sex, and the movie comes across as a cynical exercise in selling attractive people half-naked over and above any attempt at a half-decent plot.

The sad thing is there's some stunning underwater photography in this movie, and that alone should have warranted the entry price, but when the story's the same one you've seen time and time again on Saturday afternoon TV, boredom sets in long before the film ends its running time.

DVD Review

The DVD has a typical 'online price' of around £13.49, which is pretty par for the course. The transfer is, as one would expect of a modern production, exemplary. The DVD is supplied in the usual Amery case, with a four page booklet included which contains a chapter index and two pages of adverts for other DVDs. Extra's are not fantastic but at least there's a director's commentary.

Picture and Sound

The picture is anamorphic widescreen at 2.35:1 and free of blemishes or exaggerated sharpness or combing. The picture is stunningly clear in places - the underwater scenes in particular sometimes feel almost 3D, but in other scenese the pictures is soft and clearly out-of focus. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is adequate although the music used clashed, rather than enhanced, the on screen 'action'.

Director's Commentary

The director's commentary is rather dull and one would think the director had made a classic, rather than the damp squid - sorry, I mean damp squib - on view here. There's tittle-tattle about how the dog in the movie is the actor's dog and caused problems on set, how the two main actors were former room mates and that sometimes caused problems in terms of rivalry, but not much else. The rather lame excuse that the actors all wanted to keep their clothes off most of the time just doesn't ring true, either.

Featurettes

Diving Deeper into the Blue is a short featurette with lots of repeated scenes from the movie interspersed with short sound bites from some of the cast and crew, hyping the movie up. It is at least edited in a more exciting '24' TV show style than the main feature so that it doesn't outstay its admittedly short welcome. In addition there are some Deleted Scenes with commentary from the director - nothing that you'd really miss, with many of the scenes simply being slightly extended versions of those included in the movie.