The film’s final message is clear enough. Quint, the dead avatar for the town’s fishing-village past, must give way to the urban transplants with their polished middle-class morality and impressive degrees. Progress dictates that the experts, and those who listen to them, win the day. [The novel's author, Peter] Benchley, however, seems to have sensed the trouble that lay ahead as the country transitioned to quasi-mandatory higher education. His vision is clear in another grisly image that the book furnished us with but that failed to make it to the screen: a dying shark, gutted and thrown back into the sea, its mouth opening and closing as it feeds unwittingly on its own entrails.
— Tyler Austin Harper (The Atlantic)
Synopsis: When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town's chief of police, a young marine biologist, and a grizzled hunter embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again.