Blake Lively Pulled Off a Feat Few Actors Can in This Gripping, Nail-Biting Thriller

Blake Lively is, to my mind, an underrated actress, a star in the classic tradition. Her acting has, unfortunately, taken a backseat to legal drama of late, but if you look past that — and you should — you'll find Lively is quite talented, and no more is her talent put to the test than in The Shallows. The film sees Lively play Nancy Adams, a medical student who gets stranded 200 yards from shore by the presence of a great white shark. What The Shallows does for Lively is to place her in rare company, alongside the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, and hubby Ryan Reynolds, a group that consists of a handful of actors who have been the only character on screen for most, if not all, the duration of a feature film... successfully.