Xavier Gens is back with his second stateside release of the year in a film that\u2019s already topped the Netflix charts, the defiantly goofy \u201cUnder Paris,\u201d a movie that almost feels like it\u2019s paying homage to the master in its nods to Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cJaws\u201d before going full \u201cSharknado\u201d in an insane final act that will be the reason most people remember this movie. Gens can\u2019t quite find the balance between those two films, and much of \u201cUnder Paris\u201d looks as ridiculous as its plotting with over-done CGI and stylish cinematography. But this is a reasonable diversion on a summer day, a Netflix flick that gets in, gets bloody, and gets out in a way that sets up an inevitable sequel that will likely be even more preposterous than this one\u2014in a good way.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, a wonderfully simple pitch is all a movie needs: There\u2019s a shark (or sharks) in the Seine. Go! That\u2019s the wonderfully effective premise of \u201cUnder Paris,\u201d which actually opens in what is basically a water garbage dump in the Pacific (which is a real thing), where we\u2019re introduced to a marine researcher named Sophia Assalas (B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Bejo of \u201cThe Artist\u201d and \u201cThe Past,\u201d who gives a notable amount of gravity to what could have been a thankless role) who is hunting a mako shark named Lilith. When Sophia\u2019s husband tries to take a blood sample from the shark, he\u2019s attacked and killed, setting up both a personal trauma for our heroine and a personal connection to the shark. Check and check. <\/p>\n
Three years later, Sophia is working in Paris when she discovers that Lilith is not just alive and well but happens to be in the Seine. This river runs through the heart of the City of Lights, which also happens to be the upcoming site of a triathlon, because of course it is. The attention that the event will bring to the city gives \u201cUnder Paris\u201d a nice layer of \u201cJaws\u201d-esque tension, with Sophia and her team knowing that there\u2019s danger in the water but the mayor (Anne Marivin) refusing to take the precautions necessary to prevent the loss of life and the gain of shark food. Caught in the middle of the tug-of-war between Sophia and the mayor is a cop named Adil (the charismatic Nassim Lyes, who also starred in Gens\u2019 last film \u201cMayhem!\u201d), who everyone who has ever seen a movie knows will eventually be convinced by Sophia to do something to stop the upcoming watery bloodshed. But will it be too late? <\/p>\n
Gens and his team of writers\u2014there are four credited, and one can sometimes sense a few too many cooks in this kitchen\u2014take a bit too long to set things up, but they deliver when needed. Even though Gens is obviously foreshadowing the carnage to come in the final scenes of \u201cUnder Paris,\u201d they really pay off on that promise with a few scenes that need to be seen by anyone who has scheduled viewings around Shark Week or seen all four \u201cJaws\u201d movies multiple times. It\u2019s impressive insanity, and it ends with a sequence that recalls Roland Emmerich as much as it does Steven Spielberg. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xavier Gens is back with his second stateside release of the year in a film that\u2019s already topped the Netflix charts, the defiantly goofy \u201cUnder Paris,\u201d a movie that almost feels like it\u2019s paying homage to the master in its nods to Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cJaws\u201d before going full \u201cSharknado\u201d in an insane final act that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[36,48,47,46,37],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","tag-action","tag-horror","tag-mystery","tag-netflix","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}