The first thing you need to know about “The Requin” is that its title refers to any shark of the Carcharhinidae family — although no one in this movie ever uses that term.
The second thing you need to know is that no sharks, requin or otherwise, appear until nearly an hour into writer-director Le Van Kiet’s 89-minute film, which may cause some impatient viewers to suspect they have been targeted with a bait-and-switch scam, and react by repeatedly hitting the fast-forward button.Last, and arguably most important: It may be more of a survival-at-sea drama than a people-versus-sharks thriller, but “The Requin” is largely satisfying as a popcorn distraction with a nifty gender-swapping approach to genre tropes and stereotypes.
Kiet sustains a fair amount of suspense throughout, and once again demonstrates, as he did in his well-received 2019 Vietnamese martial-arts actioner “Furie,” that distressed damsels can be deadlier than the male.
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