JOHN Stockwell, director of the surfer chick flick Blue Crush, returns to the briny for his latest streamlined action-adventure.

If you're looking for tanned babes in skimpy bikinis and handsome hunks in swimming shorts, cavorting in sun-kissed tropical locations, then you'll wish you were here. However, if you favour intelligence and a sense of humour over chiselled good looks, then Into The Blue won't be your dream package holiday.

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Part-time treasure hunter Jared Cole (Paul Walker) has a dream: to stumble upon a buried cache of booty that will make him and his pretty girlfriend, shark handler Samantha Nicholson (Jessica Alba), filthy rich.

For the time being, the young lovers have to settle for a ramshackle trailer on the beach in the Bahamas and a leaky boat in desperate need of repair. Jared's luck appears to change when cocksure pal Bryce (Scott Caan), an attorney from New York, and his latest girlfriend, good-time party chick Amanda (Ashley Scott), come to stay.

During a free dive, the quartet unearths relics from a sunken Spanish wreck. The gem-encrusted haul is potentially worth millions of dollars. Unfortunately, the friends also find a downed aircraft full of cocaine close to the site of the shipwreck. If the friends report the downed plane, police will swarm over the area, and they could lose a chance to make their fortunes.

Rival treasure hunters like salty seadog Bates (Josh Brolin) would also be alerted to the lucrative haul.

Electing to remain tight-lipped about the plane, Jared, Sam, Bryce and Amanda begin the slow and arduous process of methodically searching the seabed for definitive proof of the shipwreck, so they can stake a claim. Before they know it, the friends are targets for the drug smugglers, who want their missing cocaine back, and tasty bait for the carnivorous wildlife.

Into The Blue is a voyeur's wet dream. By the end of the 109 minutes, we know every inch of Walker's washboard stomach and Alba's curvaceous figure more intimately than their family doctors. The cameras linger hungrily on every inch of exposed flesh, luxuriating in the slow motion footage of the cast in their figure-hugging apparel. Screenwriter Matt Johnson doesn't expend any energy developing the characters so by the time the action elements of the story kick in, we're more concerned about Jared and Sam applying sunblock rather than staying alive.

Logic is thrown overboard as Into The Blue splashes towards its explosive climax, awash with those staples of any underwater sequence: sharks and high pressure air canisters. Walker, Alba and co look great but are so wooden, there's a very real threat they might float off into the sunset.

See it at UCI, Odeon