Sound Off: Ron Howard's 'In the Heart of the Sea'

Now that you've seen it, what did you think? "We were headed for the edge of sanity… like we were aberrations, phantoms." Now playing in theaters everywhere is Ron Howard's latest movie In the Heart of the Sea, a story inspired by the whaling adventure that turned into the story of "Moby Dick", written by Herman Melville (who appears in the film as played by Ben Whishaw). Chris Hemsworth plays Owen Chase, a man who wishes to be captain but is assigned first mate on a voyage to hunt whales, captained by George Pollard, played by Benjamin Walker. So how is this adventure? After being delayed, is it worth the wait? Once you see it, leave a comment with your own thoughts on Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea.

Spoiler Warning: We strongly urge everyone to actually see the film before reading ahead, as there may be spoilers below. We also encourage all commenters to keep major spoilers from the film to a minimum, if possible. However, this is an open discussion from this point on! Beware of spoilers, don't ruin this movie!

To fuel the whale oil lamps and get the discussion going, I'm mixed on In the Heart of the Sea. There's so much going on, but the story itself isn't that captivating. In the grand scheme of lost-out-at-sea survival tale movies, it sits somewhere in the middle, but that's not really the focus. It actually turns out that the subtle theme within In the Heart of the Sea is a criticism of modern greed and capitalism and the big oil boom, framing it as a grueling tale of how-far-men-will-go to get something valuable that in 100 years no one will care about anymore. There are some great hints and fun lines dropped in about whale oil throughout, but I'm worried even this message will be lost because other aspects of the film are so muddled and mediocre.

I should acknowledge Chris Hemsworth who is, as expected, fantastic in this. I've always admired him in pretty much everything he does, he always does his best to find so much depth to his characters. That's the same with Owen Chase, and Hemsworth plays him with intensity when necessary along with an immense amount of charisma and determination. It's a tough role, and he obviously has no say in how the final film turns out. The film felt like it went through the editing room woodchipper quite a few times before finally reaching the screen, and the final product is not bad, but not that great either. I still don't even understand why it was heavily color tinted. Just to make it feel like a dream or nightmare? It didn't seem to add much.

What did you think of Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea? Outstanding, or a waste of time?
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Friday, 11 December 2015