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if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

If you think this movie is better than Jaws, you are. I saw this movie when I was 12 and it's still one of my top 20 favorite movies. Powerful.

If you loved the movie Free Willy Growing up, well this is the movie if Willy went on a murderous rampage! I love this movie. Overall it isn't as strong a film or made with quite as much technical finesse as Jaws, but one thing I think it does have over it is a much deeper emotional resonance, plus the creature is fundamentally different, being an intelligent orca that's attacking to gain an arguably justified revenge, whereas Jaws was more like a deadly force of nature with no intelligence and that killed indiscriminately - unless you count Jaws 4! And whether or not it was originally made as a knock-off, it's earned its own respectable distinction and staying power over the years because of the quality of the acting, the cinematography, the score, and just how it plain has a lot more weight and worth to it than your average animal attack story, and for me it definitely is an unsung classic. It's basically a revenge story, where a killer whale just happens to be the one that's getting revenge. And as out there as that possibly sounds, they really made the premise work tremendously well, and even thought of very binding and logical reasons why the people don't just stay out of the ocean! I really like Richard Harris' performance in it because he isn't just an arrogant sea captain who's ruthlessly hunting for sport, but a compassionate man who immediately realises he's made a terrible mistake as soon as he fires the fateful harpoon, and yearns to make amends one way of another, and it was clever how Captain Nolan and the orca do share a common pain and a need for revenge and vindication and are a kind of reflection of each other, despite one being an animal and the other a man. Some of the moments in this film do genuinely give me the creeps, like the closeups of the whale's eye and its roar as it leaps out of the sea to snatch the unwary and drag them to a watery grave, and the eerie surrealness of when the whale foetus falls out of the dying mother always sends a chill up my spine. That whole sequence is still shocking and unpleasant to watch to this day, it's brutal. It isn't really a horror movie as such though, the orca isn't killing out of malice, he's maddened with grief and is killing everyone around Nolan as a way of showing him that until he surrenders his own life the nightmare won't end. And at the bitter end when Nolan finally has been killed and the orca swims away under the desolate arctic ice, if in a form of self-exile or an act of suicide because the one thing he had left to live for, his revenge, is now complete and he truly has nothing left, is probably open to interpretation. I think his last look at the woman before he departs means that he's saying something like "Now you know how it feels to lose your family." It's certainly a sad ending, the poor creature looks like the most alone being on the face of the earth, and it makes the movie feel more like a tragedy for all involved really, neither man nor beast deserved to die, it was all just an awful chain of events... And the music is so deeply saddening that it makes me want to cry every time. Since the very first time I ever saw this film as a kid the first thing that always pops into my head when I'm reminded of it is the hauntingly beautiful "We are One" theme. Great movie, one of the best and most underrated gems of the very varied nature strikes back genre. "My heart beats her waves at the shore of the world and writes upon it her signature in tears with the words..."I love thee."

Made just two years after "Jaws", this isn't the crowd-pleasing blockbuster its predecessor is; it's a more adult film, turning a whale-seeking quest into a mystical journey to the end of time. There are all sorts of ways to read this film metaphorically (maybe the whale represents Harris' desire to die because of his grief, or maybe it represents everything he would like to have done to his own wife and baby's killer), but it's also effective at a simpler level; it can't be easy (much less in 1977) to create the illusion of a whale systematically preying on humans, but they do it here. Harris is superb, and Morricone's music is magnificent. It's not a pleasant film to watch, but it has made a strong impression on me (and left me with conflicting emotions) ever since I first saw it, many years ago. It's probably one of the top 5 "when animals attack" thrillers ever made. *** out of 4.

This film was made during a time when Orca whales were not too well studied and known about. That being said, it puts a whole different sense of fear into the one watching the film. I'll call this the "boat scene" when a key point in the movie occurs, which is one of the most disturbing scenes in any film I have ever seen. It leaves you with a feeling of sorrow and pity for the antagonist (or protagonist?) and can only imagine the pain he must be feeling. The movie is so complex in its situations that it leaves the viewer with mixed feelings on who the overall winner should be. It remains one of the best marine horror movies in my book. I definitely recommend it.