Octopus 2: River of Fear

Watched July 7, 2013

2001
Starring: Michael Reilly Burke, Meredith Morton, Fredric Lehne, John Thaddeus.

This movie taught me that there's an exciting new career waiting in New York City; being a scuba cop! You get to regularly jump into a gross, dirty river and try to find drugs smugglers, but sometimes you stumble onto crazier things. Nick (Michael Reilly Burke) is young scuba cop who's been assigned to work with Walter (Fredric Lehne) who's about to retire from the scuba cop game. Together they think they've finally nabbed a drug smuggler, but it turns out it's the most powerful judge in town out for some night fishing. This makes the news so Nick and Walter are chastised by the chief of police, but they know that something's going on. Meanwhile there have been random dead bodies showing up on the docks. 

 This whole story takes place a few days before the 4th of July and the Mayor has a big fireworks spectacle planned, this is New York City after all. We know that it's New York by the tons of stock footage used in the movie. The Mayor sends his aid, Rachel (Meredith Morton) to check out why these scuba cops are making the waterfront seem dangerous, just when he wants lots of people to come out and celebrate independence day. Rachel finds Nick, interviews him and is drawn to his swimmer's body, or something, she just starts tagging along for no reason.

Nick is really stuck on the drug smuggler thing, so along with Walter they keep swimming around the river trying to find drugs. Instead of drugs they find a giant, killer octopus! Nick escapes from the octopus tentacles but Walter is killed. No one back at the police station believes that there is a giant octopus in the river, so Nick looks like a fool.

Meanwhile, Rachel is randomly assigned to take a group of young kids to an event in Brooklyn or Jersey, on their way back everything gets crazy. The Octopus somehow damages the tunnel that they're driving through and it begins to fill with water. Nick finds them and helps get them out of the bus they're on but it takes so long to move these kids. This is supposed to be the big tense finale, which is weird because it doesn't really have much to do with the Octopus. All the kids get out safe, then the Octopus is blown up as they watch the fireworks.

I went in with low expectations, therefore had fun watching this movie. The CGI of the octopus is done mostly in the dark of night, so it looks somewhat real. They just use a fake tentacle for the scenes with people and that stands up as well. Rachel has this extreme widow's peak that is hard to look away from. Walt and Nick look to be about 5 years apart in age, which makes it weird to think that Walter is supposed to retire really soon. In the end they catch the drug smugglers, it was the judge after all.