Patrick Sun
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 1999
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Based on the real life story that inspired Melville's "Moby Dick", this film tells of the Essex, the ship with a crew looking for whale oil in the seas in 1820.
The seafaring scenes are most paint-by-numbers, director Ron Howard does merely a yeoman's job highlighting the harrowing experiences of the crew of the Essex in its face-off with a tremendous white whale.
Overall, the film just simmers along, never really developing the main characters (the captain and the first mate, and the small supporting cast) all that well, and when they are faced with surviving at seas with little in rations, there is more telling than showing, undercutting the tale's brutal conditions.
I give it 2 stars, or a grade of C.
P.S. On another note, I was the only person in the theater for the afternoon showing on its opening Saturday. That was weird...
The seafaring scenes are most paint-by-numbers, director Ron Howard does merely a yeoman's job highlighting the harrowing experiences of the crew of the Essex in its face-off with a tremendous white whale.
Overall, the film just simmers along, never really developing the main characters (the captain and the first mate, and the small supporting cast) all that well, and when they are faced with surviving at seas with little in rations, there is more telling than showing, undercutting the tale's brutal conditions.
I give it 2 stars, or a grade of C.
P.S. On another note, I was the only person in the theater for the afternoon showing on its opening Saturday. That was weird...
