THOUGH `DEEP' FOR ITS GENRE, FILM LACKS SOME INTELLECTUAL TEETH.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

There have been ``Jaws'' with claws, paws and a variety of different maws knockoff movies for a quarter century now. ``Deep Blue Sea'' aspires to be ``Jaws'' with brains, and while it's too conceptually ludicrous to make that grade, this is one of the shrewder, more efficient terror machines that's followed Spielberg into the water.

Like ``Die Hard 2'' and ``Cliffhanger,'' director Renny Harlin's most enjoyable movies, ``Deep Blue'' succeeds in spite of itself by taking its outlandish story line absolutely seriously, yet somehow proving that it has a sense of humor about the crazy thing. Expert staging and shock cutting, not to mention the thoroughly convincing animatronics and computer graphics that went into the movie's awesome man-eating makos, put the show across.

And the actors hold up their end, too, though they're hardly required to operate at the high ``Jaws'' frequency. Saffron Burrows, the British beauty from ``Circle of Friends,'' plays obsessive researcher Dr. Susan McAlester. The daughter of an Alzheimer's victim, she's developing a memory-preservant from shark lobes (the predators' brain cells, we're told, don't deteriorate).

A small crisis sends the wealthy industrialist who's bankrolling the project, Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), out to the high-tech Pacific facility where the experiments are taking place. Populating the isolated floating lab are fearless fish wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), morally conflicted cook-minister-alcoholic Preacher Dudley (LL Cool J), a couple of other scientists (Stellan Skarsgard, Jacqueline McKenzie) and engineer Todd Scoggins (Michael Rapaport).

Oh, and three very fast, super-aggressive mako sharks that, in her zeal, McAlester has genetically engineered to be about a thousand times smarter than is, well, wise. With the inevitable bad storm approaching, the thinking fish execute their plan to sink the concrete research station, escape into the ocean and, as an extra added bonus, dine on their creators.

Dr. Frankenstein thought he had problems. ``Deep Blue's'' ever-dwindling human crew members have to wade through waterlogged corridors, climb elevator shafts against falling, flaming debris, and withstand hypothermia, pressure shifts and flash floods . . . all probably just to end up chomped anyway.

One way Harlin and his writers, Duncan Kennedy and Donna and Wayne Powers, keep things tense is by not following the usual expendable casting formula, in which the least-known (or least-paid) actors get killed before the starrier ones. You never know who's going to survive a ``Deep Blue'' shark encounter; even better, you often can't predict how.

Filmed in the same Baja water tanks where James Cameron shot ``Titanic,'' ``Deep Blue Sea'' is never less than an impressive technical achievement, and for the most part it's a gripping, gory good time. This ``Poseidon Adventure'' with teeth may not be the thinking man's shark movie, but at least some thought went into it.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Deep Blue Sea'' (R; violence, language).

The stars: Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jackson, LL Cool J, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgard.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Renny Harlin. Written by Duncan Kennedy, Donna Powers and Wayne Powers. Produced by Akiva Goldsman, Tony Ludwig and Alan Riche. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: One hour, 45 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars

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PHOTO Experiments get out of hand for researcher Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows), cook-minister-alcoholic Preacher Dudley (LL Cool J) and fish wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane) in ``Deep Blue Sea.''