Two Against One

Yep, Jaws is famous for the scary music and all that waiting for the next person to get eaten and how we get to see more and more of the shark as the movie goes along , and shock scenes(mainly killings but one big jump that is about a dead head) but...

...Jaws also had a really good "human story" -- pretty much a buddy story with "wary buddies" who aren't buddies at all. Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider all had track records going into Jaws, but they all came OUT of Jaws as major leading man stars. Dreyfuss got Close Encounters and The Goodbye Girl; Shaw got Swashbuckler(not much of a movie, really), Black Sunday and The Deep. Scheider got Marathon Man and All That Jazz. But Shaw died young (51) in 1978.

The script sets up the three men as a "triangle of personalities" in which "Two Against One" works differently for each man. Thus:

Chief Brody(Scheider): A tough NYC cop at one time, he is a landlubber and afraid of deep water. Two against one: Both Quint and Hooper are "experienced sailors and men of the sea" -- and Hooper has scuba skills. So Brody feels isolated.

Hooper: A brainy rich kid. When Brody asks him "How rich are you?" Hooper responds "the family money or just mine? Two against one: Quint is a working man (Hooper angrily gets mad at his "working class hero crap" )and Brody is middle class. So Hooper feels isolated.

Quint: Two against one: Brody and Hooper still have their minds. Quint is borderline psycho and sometimes FULL psycho(like when he destroys the ship to shore radio even as the boat is sinking.) So Quint feels isolated...if he feels anything at all.

In the second half of Jaws when the three men are thrown together on the boat for the chase and kill this "two against one" factor is always there, always creating delicious tension among the three men who -- nonetheless, must bond as best they can against the killer shark.