A physical triumph in film-making.
A story (based on fact) centred around a family broken apart
by the horrendous 2004 boxing day tsunami. The story is simple, will the family
be reunited?
Coming off the back of his chilling film The
Orphanage, exciting young director Juan Antonio Bayona delivers a hugely
physical, sensory assault, especially in a ten-minute sequence of
phenomenal effects work and thunderous sound design. The scene apparently took
about a year to make, using real water, unlike many other CGI filled
films. The extreme length of time spent on this small section of the film
completely pays off. Its a superb piece of film-making, so loud and
harrowing, you feel trapped, drowned, helpless. One of the best action
scenes produced, Bayona creates something worthy of any Hollywood action
epic. Definitely a director to watch for the future.
Another highlight of this feature is the acting from the
lead cast. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts give emotional performances as Mum and
Dad, while 16 year-old Tom Holland, manages to successfully transform his
character from a moody teenager, to a boy determined to help anyone he can and
help get his family back together, in a performance that is truly
remarkable.
However, I feel Bayona takes this film slightly too
Hollywood. To set this story around a wealthy white family, having a nice
holiday go disastrously wrong, is not representative of the 200,000
plus that were killed by the tsunami, and the many more that were effected.
With a film based on the horrendous natural disaster, I feel a film showing the
effect that it had on the Thai people would have been more striking. It also
seems that most of the people in the hospitals were tourists, what happened to
everyone else?
Other than the terrific set and lead acting, the film
disappoints as it fails to show the wider effect the tsunami had.
J.Henderson.
6/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment