Jai Courtney | Bouquets & Brickbats

11/06/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Shark movies are notoriously hard to pull off. Spielberg pretty much closed the book on them way back in 1975, when Jaws initiated the concept of the summer blockbuster. Since then, there’s not been much to write home about. Deep Blue Sea, The Shallows, The Meg: they’ve all come and gone making… ahem… barely a splash. But writer Nick Lepard and director Sean Byrne are pretty clear about their entry into the genre. The Dangerous Animals of the title are not the sharks themselves, who, let’s face it, are merely acting on instinct, but the men who go after them.

In this film, the supremely toxic Bruce Tucker (a barely recognisable Jai Courtney) operates a business from a lonely quay somewhere on Australia’s Gold Coast. He offers tourists the opportunity to ‘swim with sharks.’ As we discover in a pre-credits sequence, the trips generally end with him feeding his customers to the creatures they’ve come to goggle at, whilst filming the proceedings on his trusty video camera. Luckless Heather (Ella Newton), a student on a gap year, gets to see her new boyfriend, Greg (Liam Greinke), promptly converted into shark food. It’ll be her turn next. Lucky Heather.

But Tucker has already spotted another opportunity and he abducts carefree American camper-van wanderer, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). He’s unaware that she has just enjoyed a passion-filled one-night-stand with Moses (Josh Houston), who, of course, can’t resist the impulse to go looking for her. Tucker has also underestimated just how resilient Zephyr can be when faced with an ordeal…

I must admit to being torn on this film. Byrne is clearly adept at racking up suspense and in the latter stages of this propulsive drama, he manages it in spades. At several points it’s all I can do not to yell advice at the screen. And Courtney, formally a muscle-bound hunk, jettisons all his dignity to play the over-the-hill villain. He offers considerable nuance in his depiction, even throwing in a lengthy scene where a drunken Tucker flails madly about his cabin, dancing to Crowded House.

Also, unusually for a film like this, Harrison and Houston manage to actually make me care about their respective characters, so I am rooting for them to survive to the closing credits, but…

All these plus points have to be weighed against how deeply unpleasant the overall premise of the story is and, what’s more, how unlikely the events are. If Tucker had only embarked on his enterprise recently, I might be more inclined to…er… swallow the bait, but a scene where he drops his latest video nasty onto a shelf – and we see that there are literally scores of the damned things – just beggars belief. How could he have got away with it for so long? Also unbelievable is the attitude of Dave (Ron Carlton), the old guy who for years has been moored alongside Tucker, and who openly encourages visitors to give the tour a try. For some reason, he has never found the man’s one-way trips in the least bit suspicious. Really?

At the end of the day, your enjoyment of this will very much depend upon your ability to suspend disbelief. I should perhaps warn those of a more sensitive disposition that Dangerous Animals sails very close to crossing the line on its 15 certificate. There’s a lot of chomping going on here – and I’m not talking about the famous Gold Coast all-you-can-eat buffets.

3.5 stars

Philip Caveney

12/05/21

Amazon Prime

A Liam Neeson thriller is, by usual standards, an all too familiar commodity. We know what to expect, don’t we? Big Liam will play a nice, easygoing sort of feller who is calm and controlled until somebody causes harm to his wife/daughter/grandma/kitten (tick as appropriate), whereupon he calls upon the various talents he’s learned in his past – lock-picking/mountain climbing/paragliding (tick as appropriate) to exact a brutal and wince-inducing revenge upon those who have angered him.

Blood flows, teeth fly in many directions and the end credits roll. Job done.

To give Honest Thief all due credit, it does its level best to vary up the established formula, offering more nuance and characterisation than we’ve seen in previous efforts. Here, Big Liam plays Tom Dolan, the ‘honest thief’ of the title. Better known as the ‘in and out bandit’ (a monicker he loathes) he’s been responsible for robbing a whole string of banks over the past six years and has amassed a fortune of nine million dollars, which he keeps tucked away in a storage facility. But his life changes when he meets Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh) and it isn’t too long before he’s pledged his adoration and asked her to marry him. However, those ill-gotten gains don’t sit too comfortably with his plans for the future, so he determines to approach the FBI and offer them a deal – he’ll return all the money – that’s right, he hasn’t spent a penny of it – in return for a lighter sentence with visiting rights. In just a year or so, he and Annie can be together as man and wife. Lovely.

But, of course, the prospect of being handed a cool nine million bucks in a cardboard box is enough to tempt even an FBI agent into straying off the path of law and order – and how easy would it be to simply pin all the blame on Tom, who isn’t denying the fact that he stole the money in the first place? Therein lies the rub.

For the film’s first half, there’s barely a glimpse of the Big Liam of old. Tom’s relationship with Annie is actually rather charming and there’s also a measured performance by Jeffrey Donovan as FBI agent Sean Meyers, a man whose recent marital breakup has caused him to reassess his life. He’s also accompanied by a ridiculously cute dog. Jai Courtney and Anthony Ramos are two junior FBI men, who are tempted by the prospect of easy millions and who are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve their objective.

In the second half, we’re back in more generic territory, as somebody is foolish enough to harm Annie and Tom calls upon his talents (as an accomplished thief) to bring down the necessary retribution – but even here, the shootings, beatings and explosions are reined back to a respectable level and the various plot twists are ingenious enough to keep me thoroughly entertained.

This was never going to be a cinematic masterpiece, but as a slice of solid, fast-paced action, it’ll do nicely until the next one comes along.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney