Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Cast: Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Winston Chao, Shuya Sophia Cai, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka, Raymond Vinton, Hongmei Mai, Wei Yi, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rob Kipa-Williams, Tawanda Manyimo, Mark Trotter, James Gaylyn.
Too often does a film come to the cinema in which the premise and the idea sound preposterously superb, the imagery captivating and the effect it has on the mind just a knock out, that is always the case when only half the story is told. The other half of the cinema goer’s experience is downcast, for where the action sequences are ingenious, where the digital effects are first rate, so too then does the narrative become sluggish, a pinch of self-indulgence and the sadness attached to the cliche; especially when it comes to the male protagonists in this particular film, The Meg.
Sharks get a bad press, it is a situation that was never helped by the tremendously vivid writing of Peter Benchley in his book Jaws and yet looking at the meg as it attacks whales, smaller sharks, and humans alike, there is no sense of compassion at all in this forgotten relic of prehistory; it is a wonderfully aggressive stance that shows we are to blame for its arrival in the oceans but in which most certainly we have to clean up. The film does make this clear, that humanity is the biggest cause of toil and pollution on the seas and oceans, but the Megalodon would cause destruction beyond comprehension.
The parallels to the devastation wrought on the planet by humanity are chilling, they are more than the fine balancing act of nature can withstand, the Megalodon is the mirror image of ourselves if we do not curb our enthusiasm for self-destruction; if we cannot contain our greed, then we are surely as extinct as this behemoth of the sea.
In this aspect and realisation of unsaid commentary the film is more than appreciative of its place in the wider cinema family; it is to the narrative outside that makes the film dated, the acting, with a couple of exceptions almost as hard to swallow as a whale served as a main course.
 Where Jaws perhaps looks dated because of the mechanical shark in use, the acting and the dialogue still make it one of the finest films to ever the see the light of day, a guaranteed night in if it comes on television; the same cannot be said of The Meg, great visually but the memory of it will fade due to it being everything that Jaws is not.
The waste of a great premise, of ideological boundaries being shaped, all too soon discarded in the pursuit and concern of lacking dialogue and concern. The Meg is not the beast you may think it is.
Ian D. Hall