Review of All Is Lost (2013) by Stuart K — 30 Apr 2014

Written and directed by J.C. Chandor (Margin Call (2011) and A Most Violent Year (2014)), this film is a silent movie, a chamber piece and a one-man performance all in one, and it's very claustrophobic too.

It might test people's patience with it's lack of dialogue, but it's an engaging and very engrossing film which manages to be suspenseful and it manages to do a lot with very, very little.

It has our unnamed hero (Robert Redford), who wakes up one morning on his boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean to find a hole in the side and water leaking in. He manages to fix the hole and pump the water out, the hole was caused by a shipping container filled with shoes.

He has no way of radioing for help, as the radio and batteries were waterlogged in the collision. But that isn't the end of his troubles, as he discovers a tropical storm on the way, and he tries his best to circumnavigate his boat through the storm, but that proves to be difficult, as the boat is badly damaged anyways, and our hero is forced to make a tough decision to survive.

It's a minimalist piece, made for a very low budget out in Nassau and Fox Studios Baja where Titanic (1997) was filmed. It proves that you don't need noise and talking to get your message across, and it is a film about survival, and what do you do when you've explored every avenue.

Redford is brilliant in the lead role.