Abomination

This movie is hot gutter trash!

I read the book a few years back, and it was enjoyable enough. It was a nice mix between "Jurassic Park" and "Jaws", so it made for good summer reading. As soon as I heard they were adapting it into a movie, I knew they would fuck it up, but I didn't know it would be this bad.

First off, the casting is awful.

Jason Statham isn't terrible in this film, and is probably the least annoying. However, in the book, the character of Jonas Taylor is more of an Alan Grant type, only with a Navy background. In the film, all I was thinking was this is not Jonas Taylor, it's just another Jason Statham action character like "The Transporter", "The Mechanic", ect. They should've went with an unknown to play the part.

Bingbing Li is all wrong. Why would you possibly put someone in this role that can't speak fluent English? You are supposed to be trying to build a relationship between her character and Statham's, but her dialogue is delivered so wooden and emotionless that it is impossible to feel anything between them. I cringed every time she spoke.

Cliff Curtis as Mac is another turd on the pile. In the book, Mac, who is a Vietnam vet, and is Taylor's best friend, has an odd personality. He and Taylor have a Riggs and Murtaugh type relationship, and he is kind of a wild card, and is probably the most entertaining character as well. Here, in this film, he is nothing. They could basically remove his role, and it wouldn't matter a bit. In fact, I don't think I've never seen a character neutered this much.

The over the top pandering to the Chinese market is also crazy. You can tell that the studio made every single decision with regards to the story. I'm willing to bet the director didn't even need to be on set a lot of the time. They had no intention of making a successful adaptation of a pretty good book, they just wanted to make a cash grab. So sad, because it could've been a really good summer movie.