event Jaws

The granddaddy of summer blockbusters, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws may have changed the face of the industry for the worse, but the film itself offers compensation by showing a great visual storyteller at the height of his powers. Working from Peter Benchley’s pulp thriller, Spielberg balances terror on the water with a rich portrait of an island police chief (Roy Scheider) torn between public safety concerns and a community that thrives on the tourist dollar. After a skinny-dipper becomes the shark’s first victim on the sleepy Atlantic island of Amity, Scheider is advised to write it off as a “boating accident,” but he keeps his eyes on the water and witnesses another death. With town officials pleading for the shark’s capture before the July Fourth weekend, Scheider gets some help from two experts with wildly varied temperaments: Richard Dreyfuss, a college-educated marine biologist, and Robert Shaw, a grizzled seaman who agrees to hunt the shark at a premium.

Updated 10/10/2012