Shark! (1969)

Director: Samuel Fuller

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Arthur Kennedy, Silvia Pinal, Barry Sullivan, Enrique Lucero, Manuel Alvarado, Carlos Barry, Jose Chavez, Francisco Reiguera, Emilia Stuart

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A realistic film became too real! Shark will rip you apart!

Plot: A gunrunner loses his cargo near a small coastal Sudanese town so he's stuck there. When a woman hires him to raid a sunken ship in the shark-infested waters, he sees a chance to compensate for his losses. He's not the only one.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

I dig watching Burt Reynolds pictures before Burt came into his own with WHITE LIGHTENING (1973).  He's hit and miss.  In SHARK he's hit but the movie isn't.  I was surprised to see that Samuel Fuller directed this.  I certainly wouldn't have known it if I hadn't seen his name in the credits.  It's pretty uneven and looks like it was shot on the cheap.  The only copy I could find looked like a shitty VHS print.  I'm sure if I watched a good quality widescreen print I might be singing a different tune but still, every scene with Burt was fun.  The underwater scenes are a mixed bag.  At times they're dull but then every once in a while you'll get a cool shark attack on a diver that looks pretty damn dangerous.  The ending was cool and left a little open.  The bottom line is Burt is cool and has moments of super coolness.  Too bad the film couldn't match that.