[yasr_overall_rating]
Based on the 1820 event, a whaling ship is preyed upon by a giant whale, stranding its crew at sea for 90 days, thousands of miles from home.
“In the Heart of the Sea” feels like a $100 million effort to give audiences exactly what they expect. The film is based on the sinking of a whaling ship, the Essex, which helped inspire the seminal novel “Moby Dick.” The events recounted depict whaling as a brutal and risky business; “In the Heart of the Sea” is well-made, and effectively told, but unlike the grisly enterprise it depicts, the movie is essentially risk-averse.
The story is narrated by a crew member from the Essex, Thomas Nickerson, who reveals the true events of the Essex’s sinking to eventual “Moby Dick” author Herman Melville. (The young Nickerson, in the main story, is played by Tom Holland; Brendan Gleeson plays the older version of the character. Melville is played by Ben Whishaw.) The ship’s first mate is Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), a seasoned, cocksure sailor whose promised promotion to ship’s captain has been delayed, so that George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), the scion of an influential whaling family, can command his first voyage. If you read that last sentence and somehow don’t expect friction between the two men, please read it again. The class tension stays just under the surface for most of the film, but gives us something to chew on, thematically speaking. Hemsworth keeps the dynamic between Chase and Pollard interesting by portraying Chase as flawed enough that we can’t fully embrace him – the first mate’s bravado and stubbornness make him almost as big a liability as the inexperienced, aloof captain. Their personal issues are quickly set aside when the Essex is destroyed by a monstrous whale, which leaves the survivors stranded in remote waters, with little in the way of resources, and less in the way of hope.
What’s frustrating is that this is a solidly entertaining film, but everything is just a little too obvious, and a little too safe. The story is smartly paced, and provides a sharp and (mostly) subtle study of how pride, greed, and matters of class can lead us astray. The action sequences are gripping, and the film offers a genuinely affecting turn that helps us appreciate what made the Essex’s ordeal so harrowing for survivors. But no matter how exciting the action gets (and it does get exciting), or how much we care about the characters (and we do care…well, you probably won’t turn against them, anyways), it’s too easy to anticipate how everything will play out. It’s genuinely enjoyable, but it’s also just too damned cautious. Even after executing the twist mentioned in this paragraph, the film trips over itself ameliorating any potential backlash. Not that it’s a technically flawless picture. The visuals can be murky (possibly a side-effect of being produced in 3D, an effect that’s really only noticeable here when it feels superfluous), and certain characters are so obviously marked for a touching death that we’re more invested in when, not if, we’re going to lose them.
“In the Heart of the Sea” comes across like a victim of a high-cost, high-yield production strategy that’s led to more and more films receiving huge budgets, and astronomical expectations (if this film falls short financially, it will be one of a string of expensive disappointments for the studio, Warner Bros.). This willingness to invest so much money on the shaky promise of even bigger returns feels like the same mindset that (among other things) led to the financial meltdown from 2007. (It would be interesting to see how many big-budget duds a studio could realistically sustain – I lack any knack for economic forecasting, but maybe some money-minded Good Samaritan will do the necessary number-crunching to find out.) If you could observe it in a vacuum – unable to see how little it deviates from convention, and how desperately it wants to be broadly liked – “In the Heart of the Sea” could be borderline terrific. As it stands, it’s a sturdy film, but it’s capsized by its familiarity, and its eagerness to please.
In theaters December 11th
