In The Heart of The Sea Review

Hunting Truth

In The Heart of The Sea

Director: Ron Howard

Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw, Benjamin Walker

Any film that gets released in the second half of December is a little bit doomed at the box office. This film, based on Nathaniel Pilbrick’s book about the apparent story that Melville’s Moby Dick was based on, comes out in the UK on Boxing Day. In The Heart of The Sea sees author Melville (Whishaw) visit Tom Nickerson (a grizzled Brendan Gleeson), who sailed as a boy with Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) on the whaling ship the Essex. This Nantucket-based ship was destroyed by one of the whales they were bent on capturing for commercial purposes and so Melville visits Nickerson with the aim of extracting the story that he has kept to himself all these years about the struggle between Pollard and Chase and the unspeakable things that the crew were forced to do to survive months at sea without food or water.

Gleeson is very good and Whishaw is serviceable as Melville and the flashback story with Hensworth is suitably picaresque. Hemsworth and Pollard make a good captain and first mate team with the Australian actor showing off his likeability on screen. Howard with the assistance of production designer Mark Tildesley has managed to recreate the 19th century very impressively and the whales do look convincing. So In The Heart of the Sea is the sort of film that they don’t make much these days, an entertaining well-made boy’s own adventure. Howard has always been a very solid director and this is an enjoyable maritime yarn.

JOEL MEADOWS