In last week’s post on the billiards movie Legend of the Dragon, I highlighted the creative casting of snooker sensation Jimmy White as the primary nemesis in the film. Mr. White has almost no lines in the movie, but he lights up each of his scenes because he is prominently featured doing what he does best: shooting snooker. His on-screen time is mesmerizing as a result. It helps that the movie stars veteran Hong Kong comedic actor Stephen Chow and is directed by Danny Lee, who has worked in film with iconic director John Woo.
In stark comparison is the Sharks web series, which is set around billiards and shot at Amsterdam Billiards & Bar in New York City. Filmed and released throughout 2012, the series consisted of 21 episodes, each 7-17 minutes in length, and featured an all-star cast of female billiards professionals, including Jennifer Barretta (“Ann”), Borana Andoni (“Kelsey”), and Caroline Pao (“Samantha”). Many other notable players make cameos.
The problem, however, is that billiards is only tangentially relevant to the overall storyline, which is about betrayal, jealousy, deception, and winning, and reads like a poorly-stitched collection of inane dialogue from amateur, hackneyed soap operas. With talent like Ms. Barretta, Ms. Boroni, and Ms. Pao, the fundamental want is to see them play pool, not watch them try to act their way through lamentable scenes of late-night dinners, exercise workouts, urban strolls, and domestic violence. (Ms. Barretta seems to have unfortunately stumbled into the casting niche of abused pool player, given her similar role in the 2012 billiards film 9-Ball.)
It also doesn’t help that the production value is god-awful. Created, directed and produced by Jim Murnak, the gifted craftsman behind Murnak custom cue cases, Sharks is rife with cheap green-screen production, bad audio dubbing and background noises, amateur editing, ill camera direction choices, unnecessary montages, prop gaffes (i.e., Jennifer Barretta’s character Ann wearing a “Jennifer” necklace in Episode 6) and an over-reliance on music.
Fortunately, most of the episodes include, albeit jarringly and poorly edited, a billiard scene. Those scenes are the hallmark of Sharks. For example, Episode 6 (shown below) includes Mika “The Iceman” Immonen, a past winner of both the WPA World Nine-Ball and World Ten-Ball Championships, schooling an out-of-towner in nine-ball with a dazzling display of pool prowess. (Humorously, the out-of-towner is played by Carl Yusuf Khan, a well-known pool player.)
Similarly, Episode 3 features the incredibly sexy Yomaylin Feliz hustling a local yokel. She makes some incredible shots, even if they are unfortunately interspersed between some dreadful third-grade banter.
One of my favorite sequences was from Episode 2, watching Jennifer Barretta and Borana Andoni’s compete in nine-ball. I chose to ignore the purpose of the match, which was to see who would ‘win the boyfriend,’ and instead focused on the beautiful safety shots, trick shots, and cuts made expertly by both players. Ms. Andoni also has a wonderful straight pool sequence in Episode 5. And Ms. Barretta is elegant in her execution of the nine ball “L Drill” in Episode 6.
In short, so long as Sharks lets the players shoot billiards, there is beauty to behold. But, whenever that pool is suffocated by the bad dialogue, acting, and production, the series suffers to an unwatchable level. That’s why the scene with Mr. Immonen is so rich. Like Jimmy White in Legend of the Dragon, it’s just a master with his cue stick, doing only what he does best: shooting pool.
