Classic Movie Review: 'Jaws'

I’ve seen Jaws at least 15 times in my life and it remains consistently entertaining and exciting. Steven Speilberg’s assured direction, Roy Scheider’s steady lead performance, and Robert Shaw’s incredible performance as Quint never fail to sweep me up in the action at Amity Beach. That action is underlined by the remarkable behind the scenes stories that have become legends in their own right and have served to make Jaws so unforgettable.

Jaws stars Roy Scheider as Police Chief Brody. Chief Brody gave up life as a New York City beat cop for the peace and tranquility of a small town beach community. In my own head-canon, Scheider’s tough as nails French Connection detective simply dropped out of society and assumed the identity of Brody to escape Popeye Doyle and his cloud of corruption. That aside, Brody is at peace with the slow pace of life in Amity.

A Body on the Beach

That is until a body is found on the beach, the apparent victim of a shark attack. Brody leaps into action with the intent of closing the beaches until he’s sure they're safe but the Amity town council, led by the spineless, pinch-faced, Mayor (Murray Hamilton), won’t let him. This leads to the death of a child when the beaches open without any warning about the shark attack. Even with two deaths though the rage over the beaches doesn’t subside and things only get crazier from there.

At a town meeting, an old fisherman named Quint (Robert Shaw) offers to kill the killer shark for $10,000 but the town won’t agree to it. Meanwhile, a shark expert, named Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) arrives in Amity just in time for the shark frenzy to reach a fever pitch with the town keeping the beach open and fishermen seeking a reward for the capture/killing of the shark creating an increasingly dangerous environment.

Speilberg Directs Like A Veteran

Steven Speilberg’s direction of Jaws is so smooth and so assured, so confident and lively, that you’d think he was decades into his career as a master filmmaker and not just a guy on his second feature film. The future directorial superstar appears fully formed here with his command over tone and pace, and the smart editing choices. The film has no fat on it, no unnecessary scenes or characters. The plot unfolds with smart, fresh setups and payoffs all the way to its amazingly satisfying conclusion.

Robert Shaw is the best actor in Jaws. That’s not to take anything away from the solid and compelling performances by Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, but Shaw is just so damned magnetic. Your eyes and ears are drawn to this old salty dog. He commands a scene like a captain on the high seas, all speed ahead. Shaw is both colorful and wise, someone to reckon with and someone you’d no doubt quarrel with, as disagreeable as he is, he’d pick a fight.

The USS Indianapolis Monologue

When Shaw launches into his soliloquy about having been aboard the famed USS Indianapolis when that boat sank in World War 2, in shark infested waters, the grip that Shaw has on our attention is vice-like. And yet, even with that intensity, the moments where Quint softens up and bonds with Hooper and Brody are also some of the best scenes in Jaws, ones that have been copied and pasted into other people's scripts for decades since Jaws by writers hoping to capture similar lightning in a bottle.

The stories surrounding Jaws are as compelling as the movie itself. It is part of Hollywood lore that Steven Speilberg tripped over his stylish and suspenseful use of the shark that he nicknamed Bruce. Bruce was supposed to be a fully motion-ready animatronic, which Speilberg intended to use a lot in the movie. Then, on day one of filming, the shark failed, it barely moved and would remain difficult to maneuver throughout the shoot.

Bruce the Shark

This forced Speilberg to use Bruce more sparingly and in so doing, he created tension where we in the audience were always searching the area for Bruce, any time the scene shifted to the beach or away from our safe protagonists, Brody and Hooper. It turned out that not seeing the Shark was actually as frightening as when we actually do see him, during the chaotic and frenzied finale.

History is part of the charm of Jaws which is also, historically, credited as inventing the culture of the blockbuster. We could debate what Jaws wrought in terms of the culture of tent-pole blockbusters and their almost inherent lack of quality, but none of that has anything to do with Jaws as a wildly inventive and terrifying work of art. The first time you see Jaws, the giddy thrills rarely slow down and even on the 16th rewatch, there are still a few jumps here and there that you never see coming.