Review of All Is Lost (2013) by Cl 9 — 17 Feb 2015

Average survival movie.

Linear, one-trick plot. There's enough happening to keep you interested, but only just. There's a minor moment of profundity at the very end, but that would be the only bigger morality tale that can be drawn from this.

One of the issues that prevents this from being anything more than average is the lack of engagement with the sailor, played by Robert Redford. We know nothing about him. We can admire his resourcefulness and doggedness but that's about it. I would go so far as to say almost any empathy we feel for him stems from the fact that he is played by as well-known an actor as Robert Redford.

It could have been worse. At one stage I was thinking that this was sort of a "127 Hours" at sea. 127 Hours was boring, empty, pretentious crap. All is Lost does not have the pretentiousness, the long pointless scenes put in to pad out the movie, and, above all, does not have that talentless, overrated prat James Franco.