'Into the Blue' has its faults, but it's worth taking plunge

There's quite a bit of suspense, and the underwater scenes are stunning.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Jessica Alba, how do we love thee?
Let us photograph the ways.
In your mask and snorkel. In a bikini. In the gin-clear waters of the Bahamas.
And no sense preserving your bikini on celluloid if we don't catch it riding up. Repeatedly. That's what the "rump cam" is for! And, my, don't we get a lot of use out of that in "Into the Blue."
The movie is a brutally competent buried treasure/sunken drug-runner plane thriller, decently cast, adequately acted and magnificently photographed. Cinematographer Paul Zuccarrini gives us stunning underwater shots and even more stunning under-Alba ones.
But we hyperventilate.
The characters
Paul Walker, who is to "bro" what Keanu Reeves is to "dude," plays Jared, a dive bum living on the margin in the lovely Bahamas. He used to work for the sneaky, shady treasure hunter Bates, played with a redneck relish by Josh Brolin. But Jared's too principled to do that anymore, or to escort tubby tourists on their dive adventures.
So he's struggling, with only the fetching Sam (Alba) and her Atlantis resort salary to get them by.
Then old lawyer-pal Bryce (Scott Caan) shows up with a skinny floozy of the moment (Ashley Scott of "Lost"), they get the use of a big boat and fresh air tanks. And sure enough, they stumble across a bonanza. It's a shipwreck. If they can ID it, they can file a claim on it and the treasure will be theirs. If not, Bates will swoop in.
But there's this sunken smuggling plane a couple of hundred yards from the wreck. It's filled with bricks of coke. Can they resist the temptation to cash in there, or the urge to do the right thing and inform the authorities, losing their treasure find?
And with the law, the sharks, the drug dealers and Bates to worry about, who has time to worry about loyalty, betrayal and its consequences among the four "friends?"
"Blue Crush" director John Stockwell manages to generate quite a bit of suspense with this seemingly routine story. The violence is startling, probably more so because of the film's seductive use of the deep itself. Great snorkeling scenes (who can hold their breath that long?), serendipitous clouds of fish and modestly intriguing treasure hunting are interrupted by jolts of bloodletting -- accidents, assaults, murders and shark attacks.
But it's slow, with pointless scenes in bed, in clubs or swanky pools and the like. And the pacing allows room for the odd dialogue clunker, and moments when Walker or Alba reveal their acting limitations.
Supporting savvy
Caan, however, plays his supporting part the way his daddy did -- with verve and sass, a short-guy bounce and a chip on his shoulder.
Brolin is surprisingly menacing as the heavy, with just enough villainous humor about him to charm.
But it's the underwater stuff that sells "Into the Blue." The history is "Sahara" stupid, the plot is borderline Benchley (he wrote "The Deep"), and the finale ratchets up the gore to a horrific degree.
Still and all, it's worth the plunge.
And Alba? We'd follow her anywhere, especially "Into the Blue."