Deep Water

Release Date: May 1, 2026
Runtime: 106 minutes
Rating: R
Studio/US Distributor: Magenta Light Studios
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Aaron Eckhart; Ben Kingsley; Angus Sampson; Lucy Barrett; Richard Crouchley; Molly Belle Wright; Rosie Simei Zhao; Kate Fitzpatrick[/two_third]

The first thing to know about Deep Water, and it practically informs the entire movie, is that it is a Renny Harlin production. While I wouldn’t be so bold as to call Mr. Harlin an auteur, his movies, which include Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2, and the ignominious Cutthroat Island, tend to share many of the same attributes. High gloss, frantic action, saturated color palette, and evidence of lots of money thrown up (literally and figuratively, depending upon which movie you are talking about) on the screen. Deep Water, a timewaster of a rudimentary disaster movie, is no different.

Let’s tick the boxes. The Damaged Protagonist: Aaron Eckhart, all mature and handsomely grizzled, is Ben, a disgraced airline pilot carrying relatable emotional baggage stemming from his avoidance of his young, sick son. The Prestige Factor: Ben Kinglsey, Gandhi himself, as a seasoned pilot who is killed off (not a spoiler) after serving just enough time to collect his (probably) sizable paycheck. The Asshole: Angus Sampson as Dan, the disproportionally rude and crude passenger who will eventually get his comeuppance, hopefully to wild cheers from the audience. The Shelley Winters stand-in: Kate Fitzpatrick as Becky, the sagely grandmother en route to see her granddaughter in Shanghai, whose age and kindness of spirit make it a toss-up whether or not she will survive the ordeal. Just to hammer the point home as to whom she represents in the narrative, one character even refers to her as Shelley Winters (a reference no one in this movie’s target audience will get, but whatever). Young lovers? Check. Handsome fella with something to prove to a comely coed? Check. Annoying and precocious kids? Check. I mean, it’s strains credulity that four screenwriters are credited on Deep Water. As a writer, I hate to say this, but AI couldn’t have come up with anything much different.

The plot is standard disaster movie fare. All aboard a transpacific flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Circumstances abound whereby a fire is ignited in the cargo hold and basically wreaks havoc on the flight, causing the airplane to split in half and crash (the First Disaster). I’ll give Harlin credit here; the crash sequence is pretty insane. It goes on for a good eight or so minutes at the half-hour mark (right on schedule) with metal flying, fire, screaming extras being thrashed about the cabin…it’s pretty frightening stuff. The plane crash lands in the ocean and almost immediately, the floating extras, some dead, some alive, are accosted by sharks (what I refer to as the Second Disaster – there always is one). Lots and lots of sharks. A comical amount of vicious, hungry sharks. At least Harlin knows his way around a shark movie having directed 1999’s Deep Blue Sea.

Eventually, more characters perish. Many of the more prominent characters survive. Eckhart bonds with the little girl, Cora (Molly Belle Wright), transposing his parental love for his sick son onto her and relating a nice little heart-tugger of a speech about a parent’s love. Rescue comes. The end.

It’s all very by-the-numbers. But it’s stylishly filmed, the acting is fine, and Harlin more or less maintains an air of monster-movie suspense about it all. No points for originality, but Deep Water is a perfectly decent way to kill a few hours when you can’t decide what to watch amongst the morass of options in the streaming jungle.