In the Heart of the Sea stars Chris Hemsworth as Owen Chase who becomes the first officer of a whaling ship that becomes a wreck and leaves a survivor (Brendan Gleeson) who agrees to tell his story to a young author named Herman Melville (Ben Wishaw) in the hope that it will inspire his next book.
I was looking forward to this movie mainly because I love the story of Moby Dick which this is said to be the inspiration for plus I recently got the chance to go on a small sailing ship which was a fabulous experience and hopefully it could've delivered the goods.
Well it does and it doesn't I'm afraid, there is a lot that I like about this film, the sequences on the ship are well done as are the ones involving the whales which have a very nice mix of editing, sound and musical score, the white whale looks terrific here and there's a storm sequence that's also very good.
Plus Hemsworth delivers a very charismatic performance here and one that reminded me of the sort of performances Mel Gibson used to give us (hell he did a sailing film himself in the Bounty in 1984), Wishaw is always good value as is Gleeson and Cillian Murphy and Tom Holland also do good work here.
And yet the script at times tends to trip on its own shoelaces by undercutting a lot of its more tension filled moments with the back and forth of Melville and the boat, at times the cross cutting between the 2 muddies the storytelling water and as a result you don't get that feeling of hopelessness that you should have some of and it's also something that Howard's own Apollo 13 film didn't do, even though you knew the outcome you were still on the edge of your seat.
And so that was In the Heart of the Sea, a fine film but lacks the tension and storytelling precision that made Apollo 13 work so well, 2 and a half out of 5.
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