**THE CAWPINE OF ‘JAWS’**


WRITING: 8
ATMOSPHERE: 9
CHARACTERS: 8
PRODUCTION: 9
INTRIGUE: 10
NOVELTY: 9
ENJOYMENT: 9

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**The Good:**

Jaws is another technical achievement for Steven Spielberg. By combining ingenious camera techniques, sharp editing and carefully chosen angles, Spielberg creates a tense and scary atmosphere that largely makes the fake killer shark seem alive and dangerous even 45 years later.

The score is arguably the first legendary Joh Williams score and remains one of the most recognizable, sinister and tense scores he has ever created.

The shark remains an effective terror even today, mostly thanks to the fact that the actual animal is shown very sparingly. We only see glimpses of the shark, but the music, the dark of the night, the roaring sea and the blood-soaked water makes the audience imagine all the terrors happening below the surface.

The script expertly builds up tension and setting up the legendarily tense 50-minute final act and climax with three very different people crammed on a boat too small. There are many false leads, which adds to our insecurity about whether we should be scared for real or not.

Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw are all amazing. Dreyfuss is spot-on as an eager, young scientist while Shaw makes for a believably confident fisherman/shark hunter. Scheider is a likeable police chief and family father, without falling for the later summer blockbuster action hero stereotype.

The way Spielberg shifts from quiet moments without dialogue or music to tense moments of horror, violence and an ominous score is ingenious.

I can only imagine how brilliantly tense and violent those final few minutes must have been back in 1975 when this film first premiered. It's still a very memorable scene today.

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**The Bad:**

People talking on top of each other make some conversations difficult to follow.

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**The Ugly:**

I’m still surprised they didn’t get a bigger boat.

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**CAWPINE RATING: 8.86 / 10 = 4,5 stars**