IN THE HEART OF THE SEA There's A Lot Of Boring Bombastic Bravado

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

(Dir. Ron Howard, 2015)

It’s Ron Howard’s “Moby Dick!”

No, not really. It’s Ron Howard’s adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 bestseller “In the Heart of the Sea,” about the incident that inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 classic “Moby-Dick.”

Via a framing device, Melville, played by Ben Whishaw, gets the tale how the whaling ship Essex was destroyed by a ginormous 100-foot sperm whale told to him by Bremdan Gleason as Thomas Nickerson, who had been a 14 year old cabin boy on the ship at the time.

So we flash back to the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1821, where the young Nickerson (Tom Holland) fades into the background as Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as Owen Chase and Benjamin Walker (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) as George Pollard step forth as the stars. Hemsworth’s Chase, looking like he’s ready to pose for a romance novel cover, was promised that he’d be captain of the Essex, but the powers that be gave the job to the more refined rich boy Pollard.

Chase kisses his pregnant wife (Charlotte Riley) goodbye and the Essex sets sail on its voyage to hunt whales for oil. Tensions rise between Chase and Pollard when Chase defies the Captain’s orders in a vicious storm scene, but they agree to put their differences aside in order to achieve their chartered goal of 2,000 barrels of whale oil – a task that could take several years.

Several months into the voyage is where serious shit goes down. The whale we’ve been waiting for wreaks havoc on the ship and the crew in the central bombastic as hell action sequence, and the surviving sailors, including Chase, Pollard, Nickerson, and a few others including Cilian Murphy, looking as Willem Dafoe-ish as ever, as first mate Matthew Joy, are left with only three small open boats, and very little food or water.

As the men grow weaker so does the film. And, wouldn’t you know it, the cannibalism scene doesn’t help make the story any more compelling! Maybe it would’ve if I cared about these characters, but, even with knowing they were based on real people, the film’s mechanics made them feel like expendable cogs.

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA has a lot of bluster and bravado bursting through its frames, especially during the whaling sequences, in which there's some mighty fine filmmaking. It’s too bad that its post production 3D conversion renders the imagery dark and murky, diluting its possible power.

That said, the film would still be problematic in 2D. Howard’s film, his 24th as director, is an attempt at a swashbuckling ocean epic that has more realism and grit than the Hollywood sea adventures of the past, but it’s so CGI saturated that its ends up having very little resemblance to reality, and as such, detachment and boredom massively set in.

It also bugs me that Nickerson and Melville never met in real life, something I didn’t know until after the movie, but still felt contrived in the film’s context. It’s TITANIC-style storytelling, and the film could’ve really done without it. 

Gleeson, as the boozy, disturbed Nickerson, is likable as always, and Whishaw does his best with his underwritten role, but their scenes add little but some random humor to the equation.

Hemsworth and Walker’s rivalry never gets very interesting either, so what we’re left with is an over-sized, over CGI-ed whaling spectacle that failed to leave much of an impression on me. From what I hear about this film’s opening grosses, I know I’m far from alone in that assessment.

More later...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER: The Film Babble Blog Review

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2012)

Later this year, the 16th President of the United States will get the epic biopic treatment by Steven Spielberg in his adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestseller “Team of Rivals,” titled simply LINCOLN.

But if you can’t wait until then to see Honest Abe on the big screen (and you want a longer more convoluted title), here’s a movie, also based on a bestseller (by Seth Grahame-Smith), that attempts to spice up the historical record by adding supernatural elements to it.

Unfortunately it’s not a successful experiment, mainly because of its lack of charm and humor, and its dull formulaic storyline. With its premise, one might expect some outrageousness – like the tongue-in-cheekiness of a Bruce Campbell project, but there’s no BUBBA TO TEP-type fun to be had here.

Benjamin Walker, who resembles a young Liam Neeson (actually played a young Liam Neeson in KINSEY), plays Lincoln, who when not studying law and working in a general store, is out killing vampires with a axe/gun contraption.

It takes a stylized montage for Walker to be trained for action by his mentor Dominic Cooper, who appears to be channeling Tim Curry, then the film rolls from one set-piece to another – none of which provide any excitement. The pacing is so off that not one of the supposed to be sudden shots revealing in-your-face fangs is the least bit scary.

The special effects factor is underwhelming as well, with the 3D conversion muddying up instead of enhancing the imagery. The blustery Civil War battles between the mortal humans of the North, and the slave-owning vampires of the South are too messy to allow any tension, likewise the literal train wreck climax.

Then there’s the awful dialogue. Whether spoken by Walker, Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd Lincoln, or Rufus Sewell as the film’s lead vampire villain, the overwrought over-simplistic lines are laughably bad throughout the entire overlong movie.

It feels weird to say this about a film entitled ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, but it takes itself way too seriously. I mean I guess it’s cool that Bekmambetov and crew want to pay so much respect to Lincoln’s legacy, but, c’mon, have a little fun with the concept, why dontcha?

As it stands, this film joins this year’s Edgar Allan Poe thriller dud THE RAVEN, and last year’s Shakespeare-was-a-fraud fiasco ANONYMOUS as incredibly misguided movies that screw with history and end up screwing their audiences too.

More later...