By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Mark Coles Smith, Joel Nankervis and Sam Delich
Written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner
Well Go USA
’Tis the year for films that combine Steven Spielberg classics with historical combat. This past summer saw the release of Luke Sparke’s well-received PRIMITIVE WAR, which was essentially JURASSIC PARK in Vietnam, and now comes fellow Aussie Kiah Roache-Turner’s BEAST OF WAR, placing JAWS-esque action during World War II. It’s not the U.S.S. Indianapolis movie that some of us have long been hoping for, but it’ll more than do.
“Inspired by true events,” specifically the sinking of the HMAS Armidale in the Timor Sea, BEAST OF WAR spends about the first quarter of its running time on land, letting us get to know its ill-fated group of young soldiers during boot camp in 1942 Australia. In a series of terse, well-acted scenes, Roache-Turner establishes his characters and a few rivalries, most prominently that between indigenous Leo (Mark Coles Smith) and bigoted Des (Sam Delich). On their way to an unspecified location, their ship falls under attack and is quickly sunk, with just a handful of survivors left floating on a large piece of debris. Surrounded by a fog bank that threatens to hide them from the sight of rescue aircraft, and very low on food and water, they find they have a more immediate problem to deal with: a 20-foot great white shark attracted by the drifting corpses around them, that quickly turns its attention to living prey.
It’s a by now familiar but still effectively elemental survival situation, one that Roache-Turner wrings for both interpersonal tension and toothy thrills. Once the shark’s presence has been established in a startling manner, he generates plenty of tried-and-true leaning-too-close-to-the-water suspense, a couple of genuinely scary close calls and punchy, visceral chompings. An advantage is the emphasis on physical effects, led by a convincing full-size shark mockup created by Formation Effects and Steve Boyle (who did similar honors on BAIT and whose many other credits include DAYBREAKERS and LOVE AND MONSTERS). This lends an immediacy to the great white’s mayhem, along with the gruesome makeup effects by Natalie Stanfield.
For all that, the movie’s biggest gross-out may be the solution one of the men undertakes to deal with the thirst he and the rest of the group are suffering–a sequence that has a great punchline. Throughout BEAST OF WAR’s tight 87-minute running time, Roache-Turner comes up with series of complications and developments that keep the ensemble under pressure beyond the threat of the shark, and that don’t always pay off the way you expect. A couple of his gambits don’t quite land (like a damaged air raid siren lodging on the big fish’s dorsal fine, meaning its appearance is heralded by strange noises), but for the most part, he successfully keeps us on edge along with his stranded soldiers.
The ensemble is all fine down the line, with Smith getting the most to play (including a past trauma that figures into the present action) and making the most of it. Each of them has moments to shine as the inhuman menace exacerbates their human moral conflicts, and the movie is also well-crafted in all departments. Mark Wareham’s cinematography, Esther Rosenberg’s production design and the costume design by Tracey Rose Sparke (Luke’s wife and frequent collaborator) all contribute to the reality of the circumstances. BEAST OF WAR joins this year’s DANGEROUS ANIMALS and past films like THE REEF to demonstrate that amidst all the shark schlock out there, Aussie filmmakers can be regularly depended on to deliver accomplished variations on the oft-explored theme.
