Jared (Paul Walker) and Sam (Jessica Alba) are a sexy couple living the dream, puttering around in a rust bucket boat diving for ancient lost treasure. When Jared’s doofy, short-sighted friend Bryce (Scott Caan) stops by to visit with a girl Amanda (Ashley Scott) that he’s known less than 24 hours, they proceed to hang out at a fancy vacation house that Bryce gets to use for the weekend through his connections as a high-powered New York lawyer. While diving in the area, Jared discovers some relics like an old Spanish dagger that indicates a long-lost pirate treasure may be nearby. They also discover a crashed plane full of cocaine which Jared wants nothing to do with but who Bryce convinces to sell in order to fund an expedition to recover the sunken pirate ship. Unfortunately for them, the cocaine belongs to a deadly dude named Reyes who doesn’t take kindly to being sold his own stash. Now with their lives in danger and the promise of untold ancient riches at their fingertips, what are these scantily clad, sexy scuba divers willing to do to survive?

Into the Blue is not a cinema classic. But it has never pretended to be. This 2005 film is for all intents and purposes a more modern B-movie, the kind of film that would’ve played late at drive-ins or as a second feature at the local cineplex. The human race does not always desire the elite, the classy and the somber. Sometimes we just want sexy actors and actresses in skimpy bathing suits narrowly avoiding danger in a beautiful and exotic locale. This is what Into the Blue promises, and this is what Into the Blue delivers. In some ways the plot is almost a little too overstuffed, between the lost pirate ship, the crashed drug plane, the rival salvage ship (helmed by Josh Brolin) who may be up to more suspicious activities than anyone is aware of, the film almost struggles under the weight of its narrative. But for every predictable twist, we get another five minutes of Jessica Alba swimming around in a bikini, so all is forgiven. Honestly despite the overloaded plot, Into the Blue feels pretty breezy and effortless most of the time with some genuinely impressive underwater photography that is much better than similarly structured scenes in the James Bond film Thunderball for instance. I think this is in large part due to actor turned director John Stockwell, who has made a career of water-based action thrillers (Blue Crush, Turistas, Dark Tide), and cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, who has gone on to become director McG’s go-to director of photography on movies like Terminator Salvation and The Babysitter. At times Into the Blue gets a little too big for its britches, reaching for gravitas when there is none, and at times the acting is a bit hit-or-miss (Scott Caan looks like he’s basically there for the free vacation). But Walker and Alba both acquit themselves well and Brolin definitely doesn’t hold back.

I haven’t seen the transfer on the previous Sony release of Into the Blue on blu-ray, but this Capelight/MPI release looks quite nice and clean with little to no image distortion. On the audio front, we have a quite good English 5.1 surround sound track. Of interest to European viewers, this disc also includes a German 5.1 track, which makes sense if you know that Capelight is a German company. All the extras from the previous release of the film have been ported over to this one including a solid commentary track by director John Stockwell as well as nearly 20 minutes of deleted scenes, also with commentary. It also includes a somewhat fluffy but stylishly edited 20 minute behind-the-scenes featurette that primarily interviews the actors in the film. From all involved it looked like a breezy shoot in a beautiful setting that basically gave them a vacation while they were working.

Into the Blue may not be one to recommend to folks who like to ensconce themselves in Italian neo-realist films and the French New Wave (although I could honestly see Godard watching and enjoying something like this). But what Into the Blue does deliver is 2 hours of hot people in a hot climate doing cool things in the cool water. Sometimes, that’s all you need.