Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson
Writer: Charles Leavitt
Director: Ron Howard
Massachusetts, 1850. Author Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) is carrying out research for his latest book and is particularly interested in the ill-fated voyage of a whaleship called Essex which has led him to a boarding house and its proprietor Tom Nickerson (Gleeson), reputed to be the last surviving member of the Essex's crew. Initially Nickerson refuses to divulge any information to Melville but Nickerson's wife insists that her husband rids himself of the torment which has plagued him through the years and so the tale begins, with Nickerson as a 14-year-old greenhorn witnessing not only a battle between whalers and whales but between George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), Captain of the Essex and First Mate Owen Chase (Hemsworth)...
Despite the obvious CGI on display here, Ron Howard has delivered a resolutely old school seafaring saga in which men are men and whales are brutally slaughtered for oil. The hunting sequences have an undeniable sense of style and tension but I feel I should warn potential viewers that whilst the movie pulls back on the full gory horror it still shows enough to demonstrate what a tough and questionable job it was even back then. As far as I'm concerned, the movie is showing exactly how things were back then - whale oil was a commodity and there was never a shortage of men looking to profit from that commodity. I can't say I didn't feel uneasy watching those sequences but the reality is presented here, as difficult as it may be to take.
Of course, a voyage wouldn't be known as "ill-fated" if something didn't go desperately and tragically awry and the second half of the movie piles on the grimness for the crew of the Essex as things go from bad to very bad to even worse than that. Supplies dwindle and the previously unthinkable has to be considered. This isn't so much feelgood as feel worried then feel shocked and then feel slightly nauseous.
Given the rather bleak goings-on this is still a mostly engaging yarn due to its effective action sequences and some fine performances, notably Gleeson as the haunted Nickerson and Hemsworth as the unflappable Chase. It's a shame that we don't learn too much about Cillian Murphy's character, in fact we learn so little about his character that I was annoyed about the astonishing waste of Murphy's talent. Also, the clash between Captain Pollard and his spiky First Mate Chase doesn't possess the dramatic heft it should, taking a back seat when it ought to be front and centre. It also doesn't help that the character of Pollard is given very little depth, which makes the confrontations rather lopsided - Chase seems the very essence of seafaring knowledge and Pollard seems like a bit of a twit.
As a matter of fact, save for the parts played by Hemsworth and Gleeson, the characterisations are sketchy to say the least. And, if I'm being really honest, Gleeson's role isn't the most complex but he has more to work with than almost everyone else in the cast and he elevates the proceedings with some deft, sympathetic playing.
So what we have here is an old-fashioned adventure yarn with a somewhat less old-fashioned darker edge, crafted by a director who's shown time and again that he knows what makes audiences tick. It teems with quality thesping talent. Who knows, with a favourable prevailing wind, ITHOTS could have been something special but it finds itself in the doldrums too often to make it the voyage of a lifetime. Having said that - and pausing to apologise for my dreadful nautical punnery - there's still enough here on balance to make it just about worth your time but it's a long way from being one of Ron Howard's best.
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