Stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Frank Dillane with Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson Directed by Ron Howard I had an impression of what to expect from this movie, and that was mostly based on the trailers. I knew this wasn’t an adaptation of Moby Dick but based on the supposedly true tale of another whaling ship, The Essex, and their encounter with a destructive whale. What we get is a lot more and if you’re unfamiliar with this particular tale, it goes into some darker waters. At the same time, given the outcome with the whale, there was only one place for the story to go. It becomes a movie of two halves. The first half is a sea-faring adventure and a battle of wills between two men. An able-seaman, Owen Chase Chris Hemsworth) who has been promised captaincy of a whaling ship within the company he works for but assigned to be first-mate instead for a ‘blue-blood’ seaman, Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), out to prove his worth to his family. Their desire for a good haul of whale oil takes them over halfway across the world to the inevitable encounter with the whale. What follows in the second half is a tale of survival on the desert of the sea, and the desperate measures they take in order to survive. The whale, so heavily featured within the trailer, becomes irrelevant to the story after that. In terms of a tale, the movie delivers one of high adventure and desperate survival, but that second half isn’t much different from similar tales, and nothing new comes out from that. What the movie ultimately relies on is the performance of the cast. In that, the leads deliver some solid performances with notable turns from Cillian Murphy and young Tom Holland (the future Spider-Man). Hemsworth is stoic in his performance and line delivery, almost channeling a humanised Thor on a sea-voyage. He carries much of the movie and does it ably so. Ron Howard directs with confidence but despite creating convincing world such as those in Apollo 13 or the more recent Rush, there is an odd sheen of falsity to the visual imagery. The distraction becomes increasingly obvious that much of the filming was done against a green screen whether its the could mismatch between the foreground and background, even though it is also clear that there was a physical set for the stars to work with, Granted, the nature of the story shown is a tale being related from one of the seaman to the writer Herman Melville (Ben Wishaw), so it might be an excuse. Still, it remains a distraction. As a whole, the movie holds steady and delivers a worthy tale, with some technical distractions aside. Some may find the second half draggy, but that is the nature of the tale. Still, there are some amazingly realised scenes, particularly those involving the whales. Strong and solid performances rule here, but beyond that, one might wish the whale had more screen time. For a far superior sea-faring adventure, revisit Peter Wier's Master and Commander: On The Far Side of The World. Rating *** / 5 Please support by buying or recommending to others. Thank you. - b
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