Jaws is a 1975 natural horror/thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg. It stars Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. It is considered one of the best films ever made.
Plot[]
A young woman named Chrissie Watkins goes skinny dipping with her friend and is dragged under the water by an unseen force. The next morning, Chief Martin Brody(Roy Scheider) is alerted of her disappearance and her mangled remains are found on the beach. The medical examiner at first tells Brody a shark killed her, and he moves to close the beaches, but is stopped by mayor Larry Vaughn(Murray Hamilton), who is backed by the medical examiner's change of thinking to believing a boat propeller killed Chrissie. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation, but remains fearful of his town's safety. Soon after, a young boy named Alex Kintner is killed by a shark, and his mother offers a $3,000 reward for the shark, putting the town in an uproar. At a public conference, Chief Brody announces the town council's plan to deal with the shark and guarantee public safety, and Quint(Robert Shaw), a local professional shark hunter, offers to use his own prowess to kill the shark for $10,000, valuing his own life at no less.
With the reward offered for the shark, an amateur shark hunting frenzy issues and Matt Hooper(Richard Dreyfuss), an oceanographer and shark expert, arrives to aid with the shark. He examines Chrissie's remains and confirms that she had been killed by a shark. A large tiger shark is caught by the fishermen, but Hooper doubts it is the right one, and he and Chief Brody return that night and confirm that it held no human remains in its stomach. Hooper and Brody search for the shark and find the boat of local fisherman Ben Gardner, where Hooper locates a large tooth belonging to a great white shark, which he drops upon being startled by Gardner's remains. Mayor Vaughn refuses to close the beaches, but empowers Brody and Hooper to do what was necessary to make them safe.
Brody and Hooper arrange a patrol of deputies and locals to watch the beaches, with Hooper being on the water, and Brody on the beach. After a kids prank causes Brody and Hooper to rush everyone out of the water, the shark swims into the nearby pond and devoures a man teaching Brody's son, Micheal, and his friends how to ready a boat for sail, causing Brody's son to go into shock. At the hospital, Brody manages to persuade Vaughn to sign a payment order, allowing him to hire Quint to kill the shark. Hooper and Brody pay Quint a visit and agree to his fee terms, before requesting that he allow them to accompany him on the hunt. Quint reluctantly agrees, but forces them to be his crew while their at sea. The trio set sail on Quint's sharking boat, the Orca, to hunt the shark. Brody is given the task of laying a chum line and Quint uses piano wire to hook the shark. He succeeds, but the shark bites through the wire and escapes.
Later, as Brody starts chumming again, an enormous great white shark appears behind the boat. Estimating the shark's size as twenty-five feet in length, with a weight of 6,000 pounds, Quint harpoons the shark with a harpoon attached to a flotation barrel, but the shark escapes and the men retire the boat cabin for the night. Quint recounts his past as a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis to the men. The shark appears again and damages the boat's engine, before narrowly escaping. As Brody, Hooper, and Quint try to repair the damage done by the shark, the barrel resurfaces and the shark severs the rope when Quint and Hooper try to retrieve it. Quint harpoons the shark a second time and has Hooper run it down with the boat, allowing him to harpoon it a third time. The barrels resurface, and Brody and Hooper tie them to the stern cleats. However, the shark rips them off and slams the boat from beneath after Quint harpoons it a fourth time, angering Quint. Quint drives the Orca back towards Amity port, looking to draw the shark into the shallow water and drown it. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes the Orca's damaged engine and blows it out.
With the boat now immobilized and taking on heavy water from the damage, the men decide to try a desperate approach to kill the shark; they assemble Hooper's anti-shark cage and set it in the water, so he can get in it and stab the shark with a hypodermic needle spear filled with strychnine nitrate. However, the shark causes Hooper to drop the spear and smashes into the cage. Hooper escapes as the shark gets tangled in the remains of the cage, which causes the Orca's crane to give weigh to its massive weight when Quint tries to crank up the cage. The shark then threw itself onto the Orca's stern, causing the boat to raise up. Quint unavoidably slides down to the shark and he is killed and eaten by it after driving a machete into its head. Brody shoves a pressurized air tank into its mouth as the shark attacks him and climbs the Orca's mast with Quint's rifle, where he attempts to shoot the tank several times, finally succeeding with the final shot, causing the tank to explode and blow the shark to pieces. Hooper swims back to the surface and laughs with Brody, happy the ordeal was finally over, and the two briefly lament the loss of Quint, before returning to Amity Island.