I enjoyed it. Hemsworth definitely does a solid job here and the story goes by fairly straightforward. While these parts of films usually overstay their welcome, I really enjoyed the "present" day storyline with Gleeson and Whishaw and actually wished there was a bit more of it. The film should do well with audiences and could end up being a solid alternative to Star Wars sellouts.

I liked it aswell. It's one of those films that starts off merely ok, but improves as it goes along. I have always loved these survival type adventure flicks and although the characters could've been a bit more fleshed out it seemed as if the chemistry between them got better by the mid point which helps once you get to that third act. Hemsworth was good, but I actually think Benjamin Walker gave a stronger performance. Iv'e liked the guy ever since Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter even though that movie was insanely stupid he was a good Lincoln. However, Brendan Gleeson gives the most powerful/emotional performance in the movie IMO. Those present day scenes between him and Whishaw were great and even the actress who played the wife was really good. There was some weak CGI during those whaling sequences with the exception of Moby Dick, but overall it's still very well done and Howard even manages to craft some of the most thrilling set pieces I have seen in a while. The cinematography is consistently beautiful aswell and you could definitely tell that they spent a serious amount of money on it. I don't know what it's box-office chances will look like going against something like Star Wars, but it should be a crowd-pleaser as I heard a lot of positive comments from people on the way out.

Too much CGI.

Ron Howard dramatizes the tragic final voyage of the American whaling ship Essex in In the Heart of the Sea, an astonishing visual experience and a decent-if-unspectacular dramatic one. Thousands of nautical miles from the coast of South America, a gargantuan sperm whale destroyed the ship, and its crew escaped in three lifeboats, contending with claustrophobia, exposure, and hunger for months and even resorting to cannibalism to survive. The cinematic staging of these events is spectacular, including the convincing computer-generated rendering of the whale (a presence both fearsome and tragic). There is an impressionistic quality to the images composed by Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who previously shot the director's Rush: vivid closeups of carved wooden surfaces and men's harshly worn flesh give way to J. M. W. Turner-style whirls of mist, motion, and nautical light. And though the dynamic is familiar (from Mutiny on the Bounty) and rather cursorily sketched on the page, a macho feud between patrician, untested Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) and salt-of-the-earth first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) is involving and well-performed.

The ruination of the Essex partly inspired a certain epic American novel by Herman Melville, a fact which unfortunately weighs too heavily upon Howard's film. It opens with, ends with, and frequently cuts to an extended—fictional—conversation shared by an ambitious, intrigued Melville (Ben Whishaw) and the voyage's final remaining survivor (Brendan Gleeson), still guarded regarding the ordeal. It is strange to say performers as tremendous as Gleeson and Whishaw should be excised from any film they grace, but their loquacious scenes together tend to defuse the menace and muscularity of the story of the Essex crew, dialing down a very important sense of immediacy. The telling of this grim maritime adventure requires no extraneous literary justification (it need not be cornily framed as a Moby-Dick origin story), and it is a shame Howard did not realize this in time to change course.

B

Another odd dynamic stemming from the stodgy framing device: when Tom Nickerson begins telling his story, the film cuts to an intimate moment between Owen Chase and his wife. There is never much of an attempt to show the action from the wide-eyed perspective of Tom Holland's young Nickerson. If the film were truly indebted to Moby-Dick, he should presumably be the Ishmael through which we see Chase, the captain, etc.

This movie serves no purpose, really. It has nothing to say and is far too underwhelming on an aesthetic / entertainment level. None of the action holds any weight because the audience lacks empathy for the characters. The only somewhat successful 'emotional moment' occurs in Cillian Murphy's acceptance of death on an island after an infected head wound takes hold. Later brother. Overall the characterizations are thin and detract from any emotional heft. There is an attempt to show the events through the eyes of a starry-eyed green-horn, but the mechanism is criminally underdeveloped.

So, despite the potentially exhilarating setting and plot points (giant, murderous whale stalks and destroys men on their whaling expedition), the movie fails to develop any sense of dread surrounding these dreadful events. The cheesy back-and-forth between Winshaw and Gleeson attempts to frame the story as historically relevant, or something, but repeatedly bogs down the flow. Just witnessing the events as they happen would greater serve the development of an atmosphere, and provide a better garden for which thematic ideas to thrive. Dread, insanity, survival, desperation, greed and passion. These ideas are touched but not built upon.

Also, I'm a hippy so I wouldn't have minded seeing a better utilization of the idea of 'man as beast,' and the whale just being a bro and taking out these murderous apes who have come to kill him and his. Fuck those guys.

C

I want to try some whale meat one day.

I give it a B, which with a movie as ambitious as this, I suppose is the proverbial "damning faint praise". The pacing is the biggest problem with the movie. After the Essex sunk relatively early in the film, I found myself wondering how the film was going to have a proper narrative climax, and the answer was: it didn't.

I also found the Herman Melville scenes to be entirely superfluous and hokey. Anyone who has read Moby-Dick knows how rambling and discursive it is (which I mean in an entirely good way); this dumbing down of its writing process to the straightforward "adopted narrative" in the film not only doesn't jell with the book, it comes off as a rather amateurish framing device that constantly interrupts the pacing and mounting tension of the often riveting survival scenes.

Now, this is a great-looking movie with a fantastic cast--I thought Benjamin Walker was particularly great, probably partly because his character had great development through the film--but it just doesn't all come together.

Yes, the Melville content is so extraneous and mystifying. The nadir is when the film pauses halfway through for a monologue where he frets whether he is talented enough to do justice to the story of the Essex, etc., etc.

It seems clear the film is not interested in Melville's history or personality, so I can only imagine he is there because it was believed the dramatization of the tragedy of the Essex required "prestigious" justification (it has to be understood as Moby-Dick Begins or Moby-Dick: Year Zero), which is sad and wrongheaded.

The film also definitely should have lingered longer at key points. The use of "day 40 adrift"-type subtitles does not connect as intended because the restless editing rarely allows us to contemplate the blend of hardship and tedium the men are enduring. Another true-story failed Oscar horse, last year's Unbroken, did a superior job depicting lost-at-sea misery within a mainstream context.

After the scene my girlfriend was like: "What the fuck? They are actually trying to draw parallels between Melville's self-doubts and the survival tale of the Essex?! This is ridiculous."

This was actually better than expected in that it was only boring in a couple parts, it was beautiful to look at, the effects, costumes and production design were top notch. It mostly held my attention, which is more than can be said for a lot if films recently. Nothing special at all, but not a bad way to kill two hours.

B-

A rare misfire for Ron Howard, cripes this was boring. *D*

When Moby Dick shows the film shines rest is just noise. Visually it looks nice but at times it feels overused. C.

If only the movie was half as exciting as the poster.

The framing of the story (Herman Melville's quest for the story of the Essex fate) is completely useless and serves no purpose. The main story is a terrific one which is badly presented on screen. There are some good scenes but it's dull, unfocused (especially character wise). A surprising complete miss from Ron Howard.

** / ***** (D)

Moby Dick is not in this movie.

Of course it's Moby Dick, that's the premise of the movie - the whale that inspired Melville to write his classic novel of the same name.

The only white whale named Moby Dick is in Melville's novel of the same name and its adaptations. As this is not an adaptation of the novel, the white whale appearing here is not named Moby Dick. Was this whale an inspiration to Melville? Yes. And that's the point of the movie. But the name is Melville's own thing.

I see no major issue with calling the whale in the film Moby-Dick. Howard belabors the connection.

Of course he wants to make a clear connection. But that's just it.

There's being a stickler.

There's being a dick.

And there's...whatever this is.

_axiom is a miserable fucking grouch, whose posts in the reviews forum make me want to bitch slap him.

I just took the best sip of coffee in a long time.