STUDIO: Lionsgate (BUY IT FROM CHUD.COM)
MSRP: $29.99
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Trailer gallery
- Fuck All
THE TEAM: John Stockwell (director). Halle Berry. Ralph Brown. Olivier Martinez. (stars). Amy Sorlie. Ronnie Christensen (writers).
THE PITCH: The shark whisperer fucked up. Now she’s pulled out of retirement to whisper to some more sharks. THOSE WHISPERS TURN TO SCREAMS!
THE REVIEW:
After Monster’s Ball it was all going so well. Halle Berry was at the top of the world. An A-Lister. Then she smelted her Oscar and made a cockring out of it. Now comes the Dark Tide but instead of stinks and washed-up crustaceans we get tired plotlines and sad sharks and the anti-acting machine know as Olivier Martinez.
Halle Berry stars in Dark Tide as Halle Berry’s Character, the world’s foremost Halle Berry at diving with sharks and not being eaten by them. She’s called “The Shark Whisperer” but really if you think about it she should be called “Lady Blowing Small Bubbles Next To Earless Fish”. Her diving business is booming especially when you factor in her Earnest Partner, an older man who has a great personality who would be a horrible loss if a shark were to devour him.
Uh-oh. Whisperer didn’t see that coming.
She’s shocked when an Apex Predator eats her fat swimming easy target and her business suffers because nothing ruins a shark dive like a death where pieces of you appear in crab claws at sea’s bottom. Surely the Better Business Bureau’s all up in a shark swimming business where people get rocked by the oldest hunter in the world. Crestfallen, she withdraws into herself and watches her business go belly up as she and Earnest Partner’s [R.I.P.] widow try to make ends meet. In the film’s early moments we see a Halle Berry’s Character really soul searching and trying to stay positive in a world gone topsy turvy. It’s apparent that she’d be a lot happier if her favorite person wasn’t killed and eaten by her favorite job right off the bow of her favorite boat.
Further into her tragic past is a marriage to the Spanishest Frenchman the world has ever known, Olivier Martinez. When one speaks of legendary actors there’s basically Olivier and OLIVIER. God damn Olivier is an actor. He’s an attractive man with an accent who memorizes lines and then regurgitates them in the general vicinity of a camera. Strasburg Wept.
Halle Berry’s Character’s ex returns into her life with the chance of a lifetime: Go back onto the high seas to take a rich man and his son swimming with sharks. All of her debts, erased. Her problems, solved. Her best friend, still dead because of her. Sharks, still wild animals who can’t be trusted.
Ralph Brown was in the Star Wars Prequels. Now he’s here. That’s like having a scorpion attack while in the electric chair. Ralph Brown plays Rich Asshole. Rich Asshole will stop at nothing to swim with some sharks, even if it means solving Halle Berry’s Character’s problems. Grudgingly she accepts and before you know it the whole lot of them are all banged up in the sea while angry sharks mull eating them.
Some folks die but Halle Berry’s Character doesn’t. Such is the way of life when you tread Dark Tide.
John Stockwell was a fun 80’s actor. He also made the fun Into the Blue. Now he’s the recipient of some Faustian curse and his penalty is public domain. Shame on us all.
ITS PLACE IN THE PANTHEON:
Nope. It’s so ass they won’t even let it into the Parthenon.
SPECIAL FEATURES, or “SPECIAL” FEATURES?
Look. John Stockwell is just trying to get the fuck out of dodge. He doesn’t have time to reminisce about this waterborne sickness. He just has time to book gigs before people see this wet tragedy.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars