Swimming With Sharks [DVD] [1996]

A harsh, cutting, and wickedly funny look into the darker side of show business, Swimming with Sharks tells the story of a naive and eager assistant (Frank Whaley) and his slide into the cut-throat world of Hollywood power struggles. Whaley goes to work for a top movie executive (Kevin Spacey) who almost immediately begins to wear down his new assistant's exuberance with his whining, egomaniacal tantrums and relentless verbal abuse, even as he promises his young charge a chance to move up the ladder. Culminating in a violent and ultimately ironic confrontation between mentor and protégé, this brutal 1994 black comedy benefits from some razor-sharp writing and terrific comic turns from both Whaley (Hoffa) as one whose idealism is irrevocably shattered, and Spacey (Seven, L.A. Confidential), deliciously funny as a caustic, belligerent, and ultimately sad figure. A savage indictment of both the movie business and the price of ambition, Swimming with Sharks is one of the best black comedies in recent years. --Robert Lane

Swimming with Sharks is a worthwhile contribution to the extensive list of films in which Hollywood savages itself and its local manners. In flashbacks we watch junior executive Guy remorselessly humiliated by his boss Buddy; in the film's present time, Guy breaks into Buddy's house and brutalises and tortures him in return.

What makes the film work is inevitably Kevin Spacey's savage performance as Buddy, a bully and a toady who had a heart once but gave it up to his career producing schlock; though Buddy rants and raves and delivers killer one-liners, much of the strength of the performance is in subtle work with his eyes. Frank Whaley is almost equally fine as Guy in all the two-hander scenes; while Michelle Forbes is convincing as the woman director who forms a tentative alliance with Guy. George Huang's direction is perfectly competent: it never gets in the way of his fine script and the extraordinary performances.

On the DVD: Swimming with Sharks comes to DVD in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1. There's an extensive commentary by George Huang in which he talks us through his years of misery in a junior studio job and is entertaining about all the horrid bosses whose bad behaviour--abuse, exploitation, pretending to praise him to a dead phone--he has combined into Buddy. He is also charmingly modest about the major if abrasive contribution Kevin Spacey made to the film, not only as actor but also as someone who would always tell a director if he did something less than brilliant. --Roz Kaveney

DVD Special Features:

Director's commentary
Kevin Spacey Profile
Theatrical Trailer
Widescreen DVD video
Original Ration: 1.85:1
Audio: Stereo

Fresh out of film school, this is Guy's welcome to the real world of Hollywood, courtesy of his new boss, notorious studio vice president Buddy Ackerman. And this is just the beginning.

From the hurling of insults ("My bath mat means more to me than you do") the hurling of paper weights, Guy suffers constant humiliation, but begins to learn the ropes (if they can't start a meeting without you, that's the only kind of meeting worth going to").

Just when things are starting to look up, and he feels he has finally earned some respect, he is delivered a shattering blow. Now it's payback time.