In the Heart of the Sea

I find that I'm fairly impatient the weekend before I see a highly anticipated movie. 

This weekend, the unfortunate casualty of that would be In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard's new take on the tale of Moby Dick.

Watching the film felt similar to a chore; it was something I had to do, that I wasn't necessarily hating, but I also just wished it had lightsabers, blasters, and a John Williams score in it. 

Taking a step back and looking at the film through a critical lens, rather than my hype-train-ADD lens, In the Heart of the Sea is just another prime example of a Ron Howard direction that amounts to a solid film, but really misses that special something to make us care or feel. 

Outside of some of his earlier films and Rush from a couple years back, I always feel like I should enjoy his films much more than I do and if I had to pick the top reasons to attribute this I'd say it's often directly connected to the original score of the film as well as some poorly (read: cliched) drawn characters that don't really echo anything special or unique. 

However, I was looking forward to this one, even when it was supposed to originally debut back in March, because it had some really solid trailers with hints of a magnificent original score, great visuals, and a particular sense of a large scale epic. 

Unfortunately the actual film, while competent and mildly enjoyable, has about only one of those things I listed above. 

Some of the special effects are great....
Others? Not so much.

Well that would actually be pretty terrifying.

If you know the tale of Moby Dick, chances are you already know most of what happens in In the Heart of the Sea. OR if you've seen really any other film about a shipwreck, you probably also already know most of the story. That's not necessarily a bad thing as the story of Moby Dick is one of the greatest in American literature, but it does take out some of the surprise in a film that desperately needs a reason for people to watch it outside of "whale action". There's an attempt to make it somewhat unique from the perspective of one of the younger sailors recalling the tale for the author of Moby Dick, but that generally leads to the wasted talent of Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson. Chris Hemsworth does okay as a leading man here, and I think that really any complaints I have about him are more linked to the screenplay and character itself than his performance. Though I did notice his accent fluctuated more times than a bodybuilder's weight during the Holidays. Most everyone else is given rather thankless roles, including Cillian Murphy, who by one point of the film was nearly indistinguishable from any of the other stranded sailors. 

Being that the film is about a giant white whale, Moby Dick himself becomes the highlight of the film, as one would probably guess. The whaling segments of the film are its most exciting, even though they have some pretty obvious green screen at times. Which is curious because there are some fantastic special effects elsewhere in the film so it's odd to see it fluctuate so wildly between poor and outstanding. That aside, these scenes really feature some stellar cinematography to truly capture the size of the whale in comparison to the men, their ship, etc. There was a little bit too much shaky camera for my liking, but I've also seen worse. 

Much more effective with a hammer.

At the end of 2015, In the Heart of the Sea will really just be remembered as "that whale movie" that came out before Star Wars. I would say that's unfortunate, but it's not really because while it's a decent little adventure, I also didn't get the sense like it tried to be anything other than "that whale movie". 

Aside from the lack of lightsabers (kidding guys...) this is bound to be all but forgotten in a weeks time. 

CONS:

• Cliche characters with a story we've heard before
• Lacks really any weight or emotion which is a bit unacceptable for the subject matter
• Questionable green screen effects at times
• Hemsworth's variable accent
• Wasted acting talent
• Lame original score

PROS:

• Story of Moby Dick is a great one, even though we already know it
• Hemsworth is a solid leading man
• Entertaining whale segments
• Strong special effects in certain scenes
• Appropriate length (about 2 hours long)

Rath's Review Score: 6/10