In the Heart of the Sea

Ron Howard’s maritime adventure drama—based on Nathaniel Philbrick's 2000 book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex about the true story that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—is a colossal missed opportunity. What should be a gripping and fascinating period piece comes off like a stiffly staged play enhanced with terrible special effects. Ironically, a good stage play, called The Whaleship Essex, was produced from the same source material. It evoked far more excitement and perspective on what this historical encounter with a giant sperm whale must have been like than this bland, artificial looking blockbuster. Chris Hemsworth stars as first mate Owen Chase, a veteran whaler who is passed over for command in favor of George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) an inexperienced but wealthy mariner. The two butt heads in the most predictable of ways. This is the first time in his career that Hemsworth comes off as a poor man’s Russell Crow.

The out-at-sea first act lacks any sense of drama, thrills or reality. The CGI whale looks terrible, and why do filmmakers insist on having every shot of a ship at sea be a helicopter fly-by, or the digital equivalent? Haven’t any contemporary directors seen Knife in Water, or Mutiny on the Bounty? Static shots of ships at sea can be far more evocative and compelling than these generic high-speed tracking shots. But the film really gets bad in the second half when we’re alone with the crew in the lifeboats. This is where the potentially interesting story of spiritual endurance lies, but in this movie it is just a dull series of repetitive interactions that provide no insight on how these men survived. I’ve got no problem with long ponderous pictures, but they need to explore something profound. The Heart Of The Sea should be deeper than imaginable, but it’s not in this case.