A small town has a shark problem. Sure, they got a shark, but the expert says it ain’t the killer shark. Too small. The mayor won’t hear any of it. The shark is dead, the beach can be open to the public. Sure, it sounds like Jaws, but did the mayor in Jaws look like Colin Farrell playing The Penguin in The Batman? Nope. Also, that’s just the first 4 minutes of Shark Killer. The actual plot revolves around a diamond and the expert is a sexy stud who saves a woman from being eaten by a shark and beds her in the next scene.
So, yeah. This is mostly a “crime boss wants his diamond back, but the diamond is in the belly of a great white shark” with a protagonist who is too cool for School. The boss hires, or forces, the shark killer to hunt the shark and find the diamond… or else. The crime boss, played by Arnold Vosloo, is obviously the real shark here.
The first half of the film is the hunter and a woman who works for the crime boss looking for the shark, then the woman is kidnapped and the hunter has to save her. I’m pretty sure this script didn’t originally involve a shark but it got greenlighted under the terms it would be part of the SyFy Maneater series so it needed a few scenes with a maneater.
Tonally it’s all over the place, trying to be a lighthearted crime thriller with Caribbean music. It doesn’t really work, especially because the characters are annoying. Well except for Arnold Vosloo who shows up with some sick burn make-up, making us remember that he did replace Liam Neeson in the Darkman sequels.
