Movie Review | In the Heart of the Sea (Lights, Camera, Action!)

In the Heart of the Sea (UK Rating: 12A)

If that sounds rather like Moby Dick, that's because it is: the film is based on the true events that inspired Herman Melville's novel. The whaler, The Essex, sets sail from Nantucket, charged with returning with a cargo of whale oil and all seems to be going according to plan until the vessel comes up against a giant white whale - one with intelligence and an almost human desire for revenge. Once the crew have abandoned their shattered ship and taken to open boats, it becomes a story for survival in the most extreme of circumstances.

The events are related to Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) by the last surviving member of The Essex's crew, the aging Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson). Courage, friendship, class distinction and ambition all come into it, but it's a film needs an anchor.  As it stands, it's treading water, and a lot of that is down to the narrative itself. Although there's a sizeable crew on the ship, the focus is very much on the two senior officers, first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker), so that nearly all of the other characters are woefully under-developed. This makes it hard to feel any involvement in the crew's ordeal when they're adrift at sea or to muster any genuine interest in their fate. There's one exception and it's the resourceful young Tom Nickerson, played with energy and sparkle by soon-to-be new Spiderman, Tom Holland.

In truth, there are sizeable sections of the film that are very simply dull and even its visually strong moments can't save it. Each time it starts to get really tedious, along comes the giant white whale to liven things up - and he really is a whopper, with a huge and intimidating tail. That said, close ups  are almost non-existent, so it's hard to say just how realistic this creation is, but the aerial shots of it as it makes matchsticks of the ship are impressive. Overall, it's a film that feels very old fashioned and close to hackneyed. The hero, Chase, has been promised a captaincy, but has to settle for first mate again on The Essex, losing out to Captain Pollard, who comes from a better family - so they're locking horns almost from the start in a way reminiscent of Mutiny on the Bounty, as well as Moby Dick, but minus Captain Ahab, of course. Perhaps a better title would have been "Moby on the Bounty."

5/10

Average

Director Ron Howard, usually the darling of American film goers and the American Academy, has come something of a cropper with this one. It's tanked at the US box office and, while it's not a bad film as such, it's certainly well behind most of his other offerings. The action sequences are good enough, but they don't compensate for the shortcomings of the story or the characters. It's just all rather waterlogged.