Shark Documentary Packs Considerable Bite

Looking to reclaim some of the integrity snatched away by Messrs. Benchley and Spielberg, "Sharkwater" is both a startlingly photographed portrait of that maligned denizen of the deep and a chronicle of filmmaker Rob Stewart's efforts to curb rampant shark poaching in Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands. While those twin intentions don't always merge swimmingly, Stewart's documentary is seldom less than compelling in its quest to raise international awareness about a situation that is threatening to put sharks on the endangered list. The Canadian production, which had the largest opening of any indigenous documentary when it opened north of the border in March, should attract some "An Inconvenient Truth"-style attention when it opens November 2 in 20 U.S. markets on the heels of a regional Florida release last month. Stewart, an award-winning photographer who has been swimming with the sharks since he was a child, initially sets out to show the heavily sensationalized creatures through his eyes, intermingling the vibrantly breathtaking HD footage with archival snippets of old black-and-white shark attack instructional films...