AN ENJOYABLE BODY OF WORK.

Byline: - Bob Strauss

THERE'S NO GUILT necessary for the pleasures of ``Into the Blue.''

Buff bods. Fantastic fish. Silly thriller twists, trolled along at a leisurely but increasingly suspenseful pace. Some funny lines and a shark attack or two.

Did we mention there are buff bods?

Essentially a Bahamas vacation with a few murders tossed in, ``Blue'' is the latest water work from actor- turned-director John Stockwell (``Blue Crush''). A totally adequate Paul Walker stars as scuba bum Jared, Jessica Alba is his loving, dressed-for-the-tropics girlfriend Sam, Scott Caan gives the film's truly ingenious performance as Jared's one-step-from sociopathic best bud Bryce, and Ashley Scott is Amanda, the avaricious bimbo Bryce picked up on his way to Nassau.

Jared is broker than his one possession, a leaky boat he can never get afloat. But he dreams of finding one of the sunken galleons buried in nearby ocean beds. When the diving quartet discover artifacts from a legendary Civil War wreck, all they need is investment cash for the equipment to dig up the vessel, which reportedly carried millions in Confederate gold.

Since none of them have a cent, this won't be easy. But fortunately - at least as far as amoral Bryce and Amanda are concerned - a smuggling plane went down nearby, and much of its white, powdery cargo is still intact. Just a few bricks of cocaine could finance their whole salvage operation.

But Jared and Sam have ethics. And the scary people with an interest in that missing plane have guns. Lots of guns.

The undersea photography, much of it shot amid schools of wild sharks, is exquisite - and no, not just the low angles of Jessica (the cinematographer, Shane Hurlbut, also does a great job of making golf look cinematic in another new release, ``The Greatest Game Ever Played'').

Screenwriter Matt Johnson's plot is, well, ``The Deep.'' But unlike that movie, this one's fun. And it gets more complicated as it goes along, kind of like a good James Bond film, only, as presented, sort of spacier. It also tries to teach a few rudimentary moral lessons, but the general party atmosphere, thankfully, drowns out most of that. The endless summer languor of the piece feels authentic enough, as does the saturating sense of corruption in the contraband-washed islands.

Plus, Caan is both hilarious and credible as a guy with no scruples (Bryce is a mob lawyer on the mainland) but just enough humanity to feel bad about getting his friends into deep, deep bong-water. Whenever the movie feels like it's about to float away, Caan does something outrageous that brings it back together.

All this and buff bods, too. Enjoy.

INTO THE BLUE - Three stars

(PG-13: violence, nudity, sex, drug use, language)

Starring: Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Ashley Scott, Josh Brolin.

Director: John Stockwell.

Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Enjoyable nonsense about Bahamas divers who discover sunken gold and a plane full of cocaine at the same time. Sharks, skin and even an interesting plot point or two.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Scott Caan, left, Ashley Scott, Paul Walker and Jessica Alba search for untold riches in Bahamian waters.