Deep Water

Directed by Renny Harlin, Deep Water follows the passengers and crew of a large airplane as they’re forced to fend for their lives after it crashes into the ocean. It’s familiar yet promising subject matter that is, by and large, employed to hopelessly underwhelming effect by Harlin, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause, and Damien Power, delivers a sluggish and perpetually uninvolving thriller that suffers from a total lack of compelling (or even interesting) characters – with the flat, one-dimensional nature of each and every protagonist compounded by the various actors’ less-than-compelling efforts. (Aaron Eckhart offers up far-from-dynamic work as the movie’s ostensible hero, for example.) And while the aforementioned plane crash is admittedly quite harrowing, Deep Water progresses into a midsection and second half that seems to consist of one lackluster, tiresome set-piece after another – which, when coupled with a somewhat anticlimactic final stretch, ultimately confirms the film’s place as yet another misfire from Harlin.

*1/2 out of ****