Other Titles • Jaws: The Revenge • Jaws 4 • Jaws the Return (1987) • Der Weiße Hai IV - Die Abrechnung (1988)
Synopses for Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
1.
The third sequel to the film "Jaws," begins with the recently widowed Ellen Brody still living in the resort town of Amity. When she learns that one of her sons (who had replaced his father as the town's sheriff) has also been attacked and killed by a great white shark, she decides to travel to the Bamahas where her other son, Michael, works as a marine biologist, she fears that the shark wants revenge for what her husband did to it in the first two films, and wants Michael to quit his job and stay away from the water before its too late. Her worst fears are confirmed when, three days later, guess who comes to the shore.
2.
This Time It's Personal
In this Suspenseful sequel, after Deputy Sean Brody is killed by a shark off Amity Island, she joins her other son Michael, a marine biologist, his wife Carla, and their daughter Thea in the Bahamas. There she falls for Hoagie, a carefree pilot, and starts putting her life back together until a Great White threatens Thea, and Ellen knows she has no choice but to face her fear in a final, fatal showdown.
3.
One would think that after the aquatic horror of the previous three Jaws films the remnants of the beleaguered Brodie family would be happily nursing their hydrophobia somewhere in Kansas. However, in Jaws 4--The Revenge, we find that Ellen (Lorraine Gary) is still living on a tiny island and her eldest son Michael (Lance Guest) has become, of all things, a marine biologist. Even when yet another giant shark slaughters her younger son, all Ellen can do to take her mind off it is go to the Bahamas and gaze at the sea. There she embarks on a romantic affair with salty sea-pilot Hoagie (a nice turn from Michael Caine), but this peace is shattered as the shark begins to target her grandchildren and friends. Where this monster-with-a-grudge comes from, bearing in mind that the sharks in each of the previous films got blown up or electrocuted, is something of a conundrum. But logic is clearly not a concern in a script that demands only that this film should bear some tenuous relation to its predecessors. The ghost of the far-superior original looms large here--in the form of Ellen's flashbacks (which actually use footage from the earlier films), scenes that overtly refer to moments from the series (Michael's son mimics him at the dinner table, as Michael once did to his own father) and a set littered with conspicuously large photos of Roy Scheider. There are nice touches--Michael and his Jamaican partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) fit the shark with a heart monitor which lets off an eerie blipping sound when it approaches, it is nice to see a romance between more "mature" characters portrayed so warmly and when the maternal Ellen forms the resolve to protect her family it even looks like she may briefly become a sort of geriatric Ripley character (à la Aliens). But with a shark that has never looked more rubbery, set pieces that lack suspense and invention and a short running time (only 86 minutes) it is hard to shake off the sensation that this is a made-for-TV film. Those wanting a dose of tongue-in-cheek killer-creature action would be better off avoiding this wet fish and taking in a Jaws rip-off with a little more bite, such as Deep Blue Sea or Deep Rising. --Paul Philpott
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