ABOVE & BELOW
A first-rate shark thriller drowned in nearly 100 obscenities.
Should You See It?
Here is the decision, and it is an unusual one to write. ABOVE & BELOW is a well-made thriller — four stars' worth of tension and comedy, a terrific and satisfying ending, and an Antonio Banderas villain who is scary and funny at the same time. It has real themes, too: survival, justice, young people who stop being reckless long enough to protect each other.
And we still cannot send you to it. The movie carries about 66 obscenities, including 26 "f" words, alongside five strong profanities using the name of Jesus Christ, four GD profanities and 23 lighter ones — nearly 100 in all, 35 of them strong. Add corpses with limbs torn away by sharks, a man shot dead point blank, and a police boat deliberately blown up with two officers aboard, and what you have is a movie whose content is simply excessive.
That is the verdict in one sentence: a good thriller and an unacceptable one. Quality is not the same thing as permission. If you were hoping this would be the summer thriller you could enjoy without wincing, it is not — skip it.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESTatiana and her best friend, Kayle, are on a Mexican vacation in the Gulf with their boyfriends, TJ and Donny. Tatiana's brother, Kyle, is along too — reckless, and a gambler.
One night Kyle slips off to play poker with older men and loses his last hand, and all his money, to a man named Burns. Burns takes pity on him. He hands Kyle a deck of cards printed with the tour boat he owns and promises the group a day they will never forget. "It will change your life," he says.
The next day, two men board the boat carrying duffel bags.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars, and they are not a courtesy. This ranks among the most exciting and funniest thrillers of the year — a combination most films cannot manage, since fear and laughter usually cancel each other out.
Banderas is the reason to look. His drug lord is menacing, psychotic and funny at once, and the sudden humor makes him scarier rather than safer. Laura Marano performs well as the heroine holding the other side of the film together.
The construction holds up too. The ending is terrific and satisfying, with nice twists, which is the hardest thing for a thriller to land and the thing most of them miss. None of this is in dispute. It is precisely what makes the content so frustrating.
The Worldview
ABOVE & BELOW has a strong moral worldview, and it is not a decorative one. Three young people step up and take a stand against a vicious drug lord. They have been reckless — the movie is honest about that — but when it counts they help one another and work to defeat the men hunting them. Survival and justice are the story's two engines, and they run in the same direction.
The film is also interested in integrity under pressure. One policeman has a great deal of it. His partner takes a bribe, and the honest man's defense of him comes to nothing. That is a bleak, adult observation, and the movie does not soften it.
There are genuinely redemptive notes as well. Two men repent, take a stand for justice, and put themselves between the innocent and the wicked. The film does not pretend this comes free; not everyone makes it out.
What ruins it is the mouth. Five times the name of Jesus Christ is used as a curse, with four GD profanities on top, and 26 "f" words scattered through the rest. A story that spends its running time arguing that ordinary people should protect the vulnerable spends the name of the One who did it as small change.
Scripture states the film's better half plainly: "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked" (Psalm 82:3–4).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
CONTENT: (BB, PP, AP, C, LLL, VVV, S, N, AA, M):
Strong moral worldview as three young people step up to the plate and take a stand against a vicious and mental drug lord, one policeman has lots of integrity, but his partner takes a bribe though he defends his partner but to no avail, and some redemptive aspects where two men repent and take a stand for justice, doing the right thing and protecting the innocent
About 66 obscenities (including 26 “f” words), five strong profanities using the name of Jesus Christ, four GD profanities, and 23 light exclamatory profanities (mostly by the two young women, especially when they get really and justifiably scared)
Some light very strong scary violence with lots of strong scary violence such as man is shot dead point blank in the chest, sharks are shown biting two or three victims and there are images of three corpses of victims underwater whose limbs have been bitten off or torn off by the sharks, two men are wounded by gunfire, woman risks her life to help another woman who’s running out of air under water, bad guys point guns at other people, a brief knife fight occurs, shark bites a woman’s leg, and she has teeth wounds that are shown after the bleeding stops, woman accidentally shoots spear gun into her upper arm, but she stops the bleeding, bad guy uses a gun to deliberately explode a police boat with two cops on board, another boat blows up, people underwater are startled when scary sharks bump them from behind or from the side, images of blood in the ocean after people are shot and bitten by sharks
Man says in a comical dialogue scene that he asked a woman at a bar for sex but didn’t get anywhere
Upper male nudity in two or three scenes, and women in bikinis show some cleavage, but nothing explicit
Some alcohol use, and man shows up drunk after losing all his money in a poker game
No smoking or drug use, but five innocent people become victims or would-be victims of a drug lord and two of his men;
Man lies to his sister about gambling, and gangster is lying to people and tries to betray them later, but he gets his just desserts.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Kyle gambles away everything he has, and the "gift" he accepts afterward is what puts everyone he loves in danger. Why does Scripture treat the love of money as a trap rather than a mistake?
1 Timothy 6:9–10 · Proverbs 13:11One officer keeps his integrity; his partner takes a bribe. What does a bribe actually do to a person's judgment, and where do smaller versions of it show up in ordinary jobs?
Exodus 23:8 · Proverbs 29:4Two men in this story repent late and act rightly at real cost. Is a late change of direction worth less than an early one? What does God say about it?
Ezekiel 18:21–23 · Luke 15:7This is a genuinely well-made film that we are telling you to skip. How does your family decide when quality is not enough — and who gets to make that call?
Philippians 4:8 · Psalm 101:3The Final Word
There is a real movie here — funny, tense, well made, with an ending that pays off. There is also a script that uses the name of Jesus Christ as a curse five times, 26 "f" words, and shark-torn bodies on the ocean floor. Some films you skip because they are bad. This one you skip because of what it costs. Our answer stands: skip it. Start here instead.
