Review of All Is Lost (2013) by Edwkee — 29 Oct 2013

As a sailor and boat owner, I thought this was a horrible movie. Lazy director and poor script. The boat was poorly maintained, the skipper (Redford) seemed incompetent or even suicidal.

If the movie had retained anyone with some real offshore sailing experience, a large number of gaffes and mistakes could have been avoided.

Some examples: Redford never puts on a life jacket even in a storm; he has NO portable waterproof electronics (everyone going offshore has GPS, VHF radio and satellite phones); we never see the boat actually being sailed, just some shots of a luffing jib and reefed main; the boat seems to have no engine and no automatic bilge pump; Redford is seen whittling a handle for a really old manual bilge pump (a handle is tied to the pump in any boat I have seen); a broken mast is released by one quick cut of a rope, while in a real broken mast situation, the steel rod/cable shrouds are really hard to cut and most boats carry bolt cutters, hacksaws or more extreme shroud cutters devices to cut away a broken mast; and there was no "ditch bag" a bag that is prepared to throw into the life raft to help with survival.

The only way this movie could have worked for me was if the entire thing was a dream, and the last scene was of Redford in a hospital as the heart monitor goes flat (i.e., this was a real sailors horrible nightmare as he died).