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

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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.

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CALVARY: McDonagh & Gleeson’s Fine Follow-Up To THE GUARD

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CALVARY (Dir. John Michael McDonagh, 2013)

In Writer/Director John Michael McDonagh’s 2011 comic Irish thriller THE GUARD, Brendan Gleeson’s partying police sergeant lead came off as a ballsy blend of Dirty Harry and Benny Hill. In McDonagh’s fine follow-up CALVARY, now playing in the Triangle area, the bearded bearish Gleeson plays a less outlandish, much more grounded protagonist, a small town parish priest whose downbeat demeanor belies his gentle and kind soul.

The film, named after the hill near Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, begins with a close-up of Gleeson in the darkness of a confession booth listening to the unidentified voice of a man who speaks of being sexually abused by a priest when he was a child. As the offender is long dead, the man plans to take revenge on the Catholic Church by killing a good priest, which he figures will make more of a statement than killing a bad one. He gives Gleeson until the next Sunday to get his house in order: “Killing a priest on a Sunday; that'll be a good one!”

As his quaint coastal village – the film was shot in Easkey in County Sligo, Ireland – is sparsely populated, there are few suspects, so right off Gleeson has a good idea of who the threat is coming from (so may many in the audience who are familiar with the cast), but he doesn’t go to the police. 

Instead our pious priest protagonist goes about his daily duties of tending to the townfolk, including Chris O’Dowd as the local butcher whose wife (Orla O’Rourke) has been cheating with the local mechanic (Isaach De Bankolé). O’Dowd claims that De Bankolé is where his unfaithful wife got the shiner she’s been sporting (or more accurately hiding under Jackie O-style sunglasses).

Gleeson also deals with Dylan Moran (SHAWN OF THE DEAD) as a drunk millionaire who wants to donate money to the church to help absolve his guilt over how he obtained his riches, a former student behind bars for murder and cannibalism (played by Gleeson’s real-life son Domhnall) the always welcome (and always grizzled as Hell) M. Emmett Walsh only credited as “The Writer” who asks the priest to get him a gun (a Walther PPK – James Bond’s weapon of choice, in fact), and Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) as the town’s physician who says of himself: “the atheistic doctor, it’s a cliché part to play.”

There’s also Gleeson’s adult daughter (Kelly Reilly) in town to recover after a suicide attempt. Reilly and Gleeson’s scenes together have a quiet power; at one crucial point they share a shadowy confession booth pondering questions of salvation and damnation. One can really feel through their exchange how troubling laws of spirituality can be, especially when considering that they may not really exist.

Things get out of Gleeson’s hands, in the film’s unsettling second half. Somebody burns down Gleeson’s church, his dog is found dead, and the long sober priest goes on a bender at the local pub.

There are many amusing lines and moments in CALVARY, but few laugh out loud instances as it’s a drama speckled with black comedy rather than a black comedy decorated with dramatic bits. It pokes fun at the notion of Gleeson living by a moral code, yet still respects him for trying to do so; it pities rather than ridicules religion.

On the surface, Gleeson puts in a performance that can be seen as a huge shrugging off of a lifetime of tiring existential ponderings, but look deeper and you’ll see a masterful portrayal of a sincere as sin holy man at the end of his rope.

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