There is an absolutely banging shark movie hiding inside Deep Water. There is also a perfectly decent aircraft-disaster movie in there. The problem is that Renny Harlin has made both at the same time and refused to let either one properly take over. The setup is wonderfully simple. A commercial flight travelling from Los Angeles to Shanghai suffers a catastrophic emergency over the Pacific, leaving the survivors dealing with a wrecked aircraft and, because things clearly were not going badly enough already, sharks gathering around them. On paper, this is exactly the sort of horrible situation that should write its own escalation.

Harlin returning to shark territory is interesting because Deep Blue Sea remains a great example of a filmmaker knowing exactly how far to push this sort of thing. Deep Water is much more restrained, and that is where the frustration starts. It spends a surprising amount of time being an aviation survival film, then remembers there are sharks, then shifts back towards the damaged aircraft. Neither side is badly made. They simply keep pinching oxygen from one another.

Aaron Eckhart is extremely comfortable in the middle of it all. He has that very specific disaster-film quality where you immediately accept that, once everybody else is panicking, he is probably the bloke who will start working out what still functions. He has occupied similar territory before, notably in The Core, and Deep Water fits him neatly. He is believable as the capable adult you would quite like standing nearby when the Pacific has just swallowed your plane.

Then… Sir Ben of Kingsley, the ultimate awesome Brit, turning up in a shark film and instantly giving the opening stretch considerable weight. The disappointment is that the film does not make nearly as much use of him as I wanted. Without wandering into spoiler territory, his contribution to the developing survival story feels much shorter than the casting initially suggests. Kingsley in a wrecked aircraft surrounded by sharks feels like an ingredient you squeeze every last drop from.

Angus Sampson fares differently as Dan. He is funny, useful and increasingly ever punchable, which is quite an entertaining combination. Dan will your raise blood pressure and, within minutes, make you wonder whether somebody could quietly confiscate his life jacket. There is another shark film called ‘Chum’ I am yet to see but Dan would make great chum… i’ll leave that there! Wenhan Li, Lakota Johnson and Richard Crouchley also give the wider group enough personality that they do not simply become anonymous shark snacks.

Technically, Deep Water is difficult to complain about. D.J. Stipsen gives the film the scale and finish expected from a modern survival thriller, and the blend of practical work and CGI is generally convincing. The sharks work. The crash material works. Nothing here looks as though the production ran out of money and sent somebody to buy a rubber fin from a seaside gift shop.

Which makes the central problem more irritating. There are good shark moments, but not enough memorable shark-driven sequences or escalating attacks to make this the gripping sharksploitation thriller it could have been. At the same time, the aircraft-disaster material never grows into a completely satisfying disaster movie either. Deep Water establishes a fantastic playground for aquatic trouble, then seems strangely cautious about going completely overboard. For once, going overboard would have been exactly the correct decision. The strangest comparison is Sharknado. Deep Water is obviously better acted, better photographed and vastly more respectable as a production, yet I enjoyed Sharknado more. That is not because Sharknado is secretly superior cinema. It is because Sharknado knows precisely what ridiculous thing it wants to be and commits to it. Deep Water has Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Renny Harlin and sharks circling a commercial airliner, yet somehow produces less sheer entertainment than those ingredients promise.

There is still enough here for committed shark-film and disaster-movie fans to get something from it. This is not terrible filmmaking, and it certainly is not a cheap-looking disaster held together by bad effects. It is simply a good premise, a strong cast and a polished production that never quite becomes the movie lurking inside its own setup. Worth seeing if shark films are already your thing. Worth hunting down the Ultimate Pressed Extended Edition Director’s Cut Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD…. Probably not!