This was 1 movie that I did not plan on watching, but when my wife and I got some free time yesterday at noon and wanted to see a new Indonesian movie, apparently the timing was just right to see this one first before watching that movie. We immediately bought our tickets and just missed the first 1 or 2 minutes of the movie. So here goes more on the movie.
Brief Story Line
Story was set in 1983, where Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley - The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent series etc), a carefree young woman reached Tahiti for the first time and working odd jobs to self finance her adventures. She later on met with a British sailor named Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin - Me Before You, The Hunger Games series etc) who had experience going around the world using his own yacht. The two of them hit it off easily and later on fell in love with one another.
When a US couple named Peter (Jeffrey Thomas) and Christine (Elizabeth Hawthorne) gave them an offer to deliver their yacht from Tahiti to San Diego, Tami and Richard could not resist and take on the offer. But unfortunately they encountered a heavy storm which almost completely damaged the yacht. The engine could not start and the radio was not working. Tami and Richard later on had to survive on the drifting yacht with very little food and water until they could reach the nearest island or met with other ships.
So could they survive? Find them all in this quite powerful amazing true story of survival.
End of Brief Story Line
I have to admit that I did not know about the story of this movie other than it was based on actual events. Therefore when my wife and I went to see this, we just go with the flow and we were not disappointed. The story was told in 2 timelines, with the situation after the yacht hit the storm and then flashbacks on the story of how Tami and Richard found each other and ultimately the 2 timelines became one after two third of the movie. That was when the story became even more surprising to us.
Whenever we see a true story being adapted into a movie, there was always a tendency to over dramatize the situation. We know that there would be dramatization, but the good thing about this one was I think it was not overly done. The acting of Shailene Woodley here came naturally and we could picture her as this young carefree, very intelligent person who loved Richard so much. It was due to her performance that the movie felt quite powerful (Shailene also co-produced this movie).
Credit also have to be given to the director Baltasar Kormákur (who had prior experience of directing heavy drama like Everest or action movies such as Contraband, 2 Guns etc). He was able to make the story quite interesting and gave us quite a surprise towards the end. The drama was shown quite intense especially the scenes involving Tami and Richard before they went for the journey and while adrift. Of course there would also be some emotional touching moments (which as usual affected my wife) in film such as this.
The movie to my surprise had quiet a big budget, which I think was put to the special effects of the hurricane and stormy seas. My only dissatisfaction was the movie was very dark, even during the sailing scenes when the sea was calm which normally would translate to bright scenery. I am not sure whether it was because of the theater's projection screen or it was from the movie itself. The music was quite good with a nice song towards the end which suit the condition at that moment. There was a brief scene showing the real character before the end credit scene.
Overall, for a movie about survival based on true story, this one was pretty decent and exactly what you could get from such story. It may not have been the best kind of such movie, but the message did come across to us audience that you really need to have the strength of the mind and very strong love, plus a bit of luck to survive a catastrophic event. So if you are looking for such drama movie, this can be an option. But if you do not like to see a movie where most of the scenes were shot on the sea with only 2 characters almost the entire movie, then this might not be to your liking. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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