Shark horror: Blood, guts, chum and a boatload of fun

Sydney-born actor Jai Courtenay is at the top of his game as a boat operator who takes tourists diving with sharks in heart-racer Dangerous Animals.

Australian actor Jai Courtenay in Dangerous Animals

Dangerous Animals (MA15+)
98 minutes
In cinemas
★★★½

Jai Courtney delivers the performance of his career in Dangerous Animals, a survival thriller filmed on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

He is Tucker, a bear of a man who runs an expedition business from his red tug boat. He has the air of a thongs-wearing showman and his main tourist attraction is diving in a shark cage.

When he takes aboard the Canadian Greg (Australian actor Liam Greinke) and the Englishwoman Heather (Australian actor Ella Newton) he lifts his shirt to show the scars from being mauled by a great white when he was seven. “I Beat Jaws!” reads the headline on a framed newspaper hanging on the cabin wall.

Greg asks if it hurt when the shark chomped its 300-odd teeth. “It didn’t tickle,’’ Tucker replies. Then he adds a line that is worth keeping in mind. “It’s not the shark’s fault.”

This Australian-US co-production is directed by Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne and written by Canadian screenwriter Nick Lepard. The title is literal. As any tourist knows, Australia has its fair share of dangerous animals. The question here is which is the most dangerous.

Greg and Heather descend in the shark cage. The underwater cinematography is terrific. Filmmaking has come far since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). Something unexpected happens. Let’s just say there is blood in the water. And this is before the opening credits.

What follows is a well-directed, well-written life-and-death thriller that will make the heart race. The camerawork (Shelley Farthing-Dawe) and music (Michael Yezerski) do their bit to build the tension and drama.

The other main characters are US tourist Zephyr (American actor Hassie Harrison) and local real estate agent Moses (Australian actor Josh Heuston). They bond over surfing and have a one-night stand. Then something unexpected happens.

At the centre of it all is Courtney. The Sydney-born actor is top of this food chain. “The shark,’’ he tells tourists, “brings order”. In one of the best scenes, he does his own version of Tom Cruise’s jocks dance in Risky Business (1983), with Stevie Wright’s 70s song Evie blaring from the stereo.

There are moments that are hard to watch. Not because they are over-the-top, but because they are realistic. They show people doing what they have to do to stay alive. At the same time there are moments of humour, with Lepard’s script letting a few rom-com minnows swim in the shark-infested waters.

This is the Tasmanian-born director’s third film after the horror flicks The Loved Ones (2009) and The Devil’s Candy (2015). At the preview I attended he told the audience he’d heard that movies with sharks in them always make money. I suspect he will be right.

For all its blood and guts and chum in the water, this movie is a boatload of fun. If you plan to see it I suggest you refrain from reading much about it. As noted, from before the opening credits something wicked this way comes, and it is far better not to know about it beforehand.

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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (M)
94 minutes
In English and French with English subtitles
★★★½

How many meet cutes can one movie contain? Lots of them, if the clever and charming French romantic dramedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is any guide.

Here’s the set-up to this film written and directed by French filmmaker Laura Piana. Agathe (British-French actor Camille Rutherford) is 30ish and works at the celebrated Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris.

Her colleague and best friend is Felix (French actor Pablo Pauly), who she compares to a character in Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford: “A liar and seducer”. Over lunch between the bookstacks, he asks why her only relationship is with her sandwich. “What are you waiting for? Mark Darcy?”

Agathe starts writing a romance novel in English. Felix sends the opening chapters to The Jane Austen Residency in England and, voila, Agathe is invited to its two-week writing retreat.

She’s collected by Oliver (English actor Charlie Anson), the great, great, great, great nephew of Jane Austen. This is the first meet cute. First, she throws up on his shoes. Next, he teaches contemporary literature and thinks his distant aunt is overrated. Agathe disagrees.

The car breaks down, Agathe takes a phone call from her sister and says what she thinks of Oliver, assuming he doesn’t speak French. It’s a wonderful parallel with Elizabeth Bennet’s first encounter with Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1813). “Meet cute” was coined well after Austen’s death, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t write such moments. More follow as Agathe settles into the Austen manor, where Oliver also lives. Wait for the bathroom scene. Talk about awkward. Talk about frisson.

Pablo Pauly and Camille Rutherford in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

The question is, will these brushes lead to romance between Agathe and Oliver? The other question is, are Agathe and Felix, friends for a decade, in love? When he sees her off, they kiss, and she remembers it. The writing retreat ends with a ball that could be in an Austen novel, and only a ferry ride separates Felix and Agathe.

This is an intelligent, well-directed, well-acted movie that, at its heart, just wants to have a bit of fun.

As Agathe says of her literary heroine, she made female characters “human beings, even capable of humour”.