In the Heart of the Sea

Released:  December 11^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson

Directed by:  Ron Howard

Written by:  Charles Leavitt

Personal Bias Alert:  never read Moby-Dick, likes man-versus-nature themes

5.3 of 10

            Walking through the local movie theater a few months ago, I spotted a poster for In the Heart of the Sea.  It’s a great poster, using the massiveness of the whale to emphasize the futility of men, and then I noticed that it listed the old March release date.  The film was delayed for nine months, allegedly to position it for an awards season run, but few people bought that explanation.  It originally would’ve competed with the releases of Cinderella and Run All Night, while it’s new December slot had it up against zero wide releases.  A stinker was suspected, and the long wait soured many, like me, who were intrigued by this film.  Now it’s finally out in the world, and while it’s not a complete travesty, it does blow a solid premise and a strong cast.

            In the Heart of the Sea endeavors to tell the real-life inspiration for Moby-Dick, where the crew of the whaling ship Essex is attacked and stranded by a massive white whale.  There’s no one here to call Ishmael, but the storyteller role remains, taken over by the grizzled and haunted Thomas (Brendan Gleeson) who was the cabin boy on the ill-fated trip.  Novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) drags the story out of him, and what unravels is a tale of many, but unfortunately incohesive, sides.

            Charles Leavitt gets the lone screenwriter credit here, but story credits also go to the writing duo of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.  Leavitt’s spotty track record includes the excellent Blood Diamond and the terrible Seventh Son, while Jaffa and Silver have collaborated on blockbusters like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World.  That’s not a particularly strong team, and they clearly struggled with the cumbersome, sprawling nature of this story.  There’s a lot of characters to set up as well as the unfamiliar business of whale hunting, and then they needed to condense what is a very long story into a manageable size.  They never seem to land on how to do any of this, as characters are paper-thin but made to have unsatisfying arcs (á la Jurassic World) and the story is allowed to plod on far longer than is needed (á la Seventh Son).  To add to the messiness, there’s a part of the film that tries to take on the myriad of themes that run through the story, but there’s also clearly a pull to make this into an action film (there’s a moment where Chris Hemsworth jumps at the whale with a hatchet).  This overall disjointedness nearly ruins what should be an epic tale, one that Melville himself was able to form into an American classic.

            Luckily for the audience, even when the story struggles there’s always a top-shelf actor onscreen to make it sort of work.  Hemsworth leads the group, and even though his accent is a bit shaky, his shoulders and acting ability are more than broad enough to carry the load.  He, Benjamin Walker, and Cillian Murphy make a nice threesome as the ship’s leaders, and they smooth out some of the dark turns that the film takes.  Tom Holland plays the younger version of Gleeson, and he yet again proves to be a young actor worth watching.  But it’s the scenes back on land with Gleeson and Whishaw that pop the most, proving yet again that masterfully played conversations can be more riveting than CGI spectacles.

            And there is a lot of CGI in this thing, as everything from the whales they are hunting to the backdrop behind the characters is digitally rendered in a strangely obvious way.  It’s the kind of film where the real things feel more palpable and set apart from those that aren’t, and it’s such a pervasive feeling that it’s hard to determine whether it was intentional or not.  Director Ron Howard would be the man to ask, and whether you find this effect and his constantly moving camera beautiful or a bit annoying will be dependent on your personal taste  It certainly makes it impossible to forget that you’re watching a movie, and while it does lead to a few impressive shots, that doesn’t make up for how jarring it often is.

            In the Heart of the Sea had a tough legacy to live up to, both from the history of its story and from the talent involved in its production.  It’s disappointing that it is such a long, jumbled mess, but there’s still bright spots peppered into this long slog.  Then again, it’s kind of fitting that the filmmaker’s attempt to make an epic out of the story behind Moby-Dick ended up as their white whale.

Other Notes:

Ø  Warning:  this film contains unnecessary whale gore.

Ø  As good of a job as Hemsworth did, I still feel that he was miscast.  He’s just too lumbering and imposing of a figure to be in the cramped spaces of a boat.

Ø  Is it possible for Frank Dillane not to feel smarmy?