Review of In the Heart of the Sea (2015) by Thomas D — 11 Dec 2015

Despite being sold as, "the story that inspired 'Moby Dick'," this is really just a run of the mill survival story -- think "Alive" on a whaling boat. Aside from the whale and conflict between the captain and first mate this actually bears very little resemblance to the famous story.

The problem is that this story is even a highly fictionalized version of even the REAL events. The story of the Essex does read as rather interesting and should have made a good movie -- even the Wikipedia summary is fascinating -- but somehow this is rather bland, with melodrama added to heighten the emotion, or elements changed to further the parallels to Moby Dick.

As examples, the whale's representation is closer to that of the book and overplayed to real life, while the crew conflict is overplayed compared to real life but underplayed to the book, and a certain post-sinking survival event needlessly changed for melodrama.

Even the framing device of the cabin boy narrating to Melville years later, from what I gather, didn't happen; both said cabin boy and the first mate published their accounts which Melville later read.

Most infuriating of all is actual climax, which draws a heavy-handed parallel to modern business events which falls completely flat since, near as I can tell, that also did not happen. The acting is mostly fine -- Hemsworth's accent is dodgy but his characterization is OK -- but with so many characters they all tended to blend together, so I often forgot whom was on screen unless it was Hemsworth or Cillian Murphy, as even the Captain and cabin boy blended into the background in the later scenes.

Still, with all that said, as a film this is mostly just mediocre and ultimately forgettable as opposed to being downright offensive. The visuals at times are stunning, although I'd avoid the 3D version as it adds nothing to the presentation.

Even with all the melodramatic moments, it does contain enough elements of humor and excitement to keep the story flowing, and there were only a few moments when it bogged down totally. If you're not bothered by a lack of historical accuracy, then you might find something here, but for me this honestly is just a lot of wasted potential.