In the Heart of the Sea Review

3.5 Stars

 

"Call me Ishmael."  It's the opening line of Moby Dick written by Herman Melville in 1851 and is one of the most famous first lines in literary history.  It's right up there with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from A Tale of Two Cities.  Melville's account of events that supposedly took place in New England in 1820 is also hailed as "the greatest book of the sea ever written" and "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world".  In the Heart of the Sea is Ron Howard's film that is not an adaptation of the novel by Melville and the infamous Captain Ahab's unhealthy obsession with the great white whale.  It is, instead, a film about the actual events that lead the Melville's story.  It's about Captain George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) about the Essex.  The ship was destroyed by a giant sperm whale as chronicled by Chase.

The preview looked absolutely incredible.  It looked like the the kind of action-packed yet character-driven films that Ron Howard has mastered over the years as he's brought us such incredible movies like Backdraft, Apollo 13, and Cinderella Man.  Even his earlier works of Cocoon and Willow are still watched with fondness as stepping stones of ingenuity and story-telling.  However, my hesitation came from knowing they could not have filmed this with an actual giant whale. In the Heart of the Sea could very easily have lost its audience with so much of the movie relying on the whale to sell it.  At least, that's how it looked from the preview.  However, the whale wasn't as much in the story as the preview made it seem.

 

In the early 1800's, it was found that whale oil produced a flame that lasted much longer than other oils previously used.  Whalers were paid good money to be gone on long and dangerous expeditions to kill whales and bring back barrels of their oil.  Author Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) heard a story passed down through the years about a monster whale that had taken down several whaling ships and went in search of a first hand account.  Reluctantly, Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), a fourteen year old cabin boy aboard the Essex and one of the few survivors, agreed to tell Melville the story some 30 years after the harrowing experience.  The story and the characters were excellent as expected.  95 per cent of the special effects were amazing and flawless.  I did notice during the first scene where whales were spotted, the use of a blue screen, but that might just have been because I was looking for it.  I also was slightly disappointed in how little the whale was in the movie, but that was because of the expectations set up by the preview.  Because of those things, I knocked my original 4.0 star prediction for In the Heart of the Sea down slightly to 3.5 stars.  A great Ron Howard film that has a decent chance of making it to my home collection.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.