Amazon.com Essentials:
In the vastly overrated 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging
Bulls, author Peter Biskind puts the blame for Hollywood's
blockbuster mentality at least partially on Steven Spielberg's
box-office success with this adaptation of Peter Benchley's
bestselling novel. But
you can't blame Spielberg for making a terrific movie, which
Jaws definitely is. The story of a Long Island town whose
summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark
attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley's book
and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted,
crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of
terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard
Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the
old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on
Shaw's boat--as the three of them realize that in fact the shark is
hunting them--are what entertaining moviemaking is all about.
--Marshall Fine
