najib-02749 HOW ON EARTH DID THIS MOVIE BECOME A FLOP??Only USD$25 million in the US and less than US$100 million worldwide?This movie needs to be celebrated and deserves far better credit. It's a tale of survival, grudge, jealousy. fear and agony. And the director managed to showcase the glory of Moby Dick and reality of the London oil business in the 1800s.Pros: 1) Story 2) Casting 3) VFX 4) Background ScoreCons: 1) Maybe Too Political?? 2) Whale has minimal screen time

Edgar Soberon Torchia Not a good movie. But the story of the young impressed me deeply: the young Thomas Nickerson, who survived to tell the story; and Henry Coffin, the faithful relative of Captain Pollard. Two strong characters, genuine, vulnerable, emotional. One fearful and humble; the other, an arrogant climber. The rest of the characters are stereotypes, buried under macho posing, cheap melodrama by courtesy of the female characters (how unfair, with all those weeping, boring hunks), gallons of unbearable music and tons of special effects.Apart from Nickerson and Coffin, I have to give credit to the powerful sinking sequence of the Essex, an effective evocation of people aboard a boat being hit by a giant sea creature.

Michael Ledo This is a slightly embellished story of the whaling ship Essex which was sunk by a Sperm Whale in 1820. This story was the inspiration for Melville's "Moby Dick." In the film Melville (Ben Whishaw) interviews the adult Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) who spends his time in a bottle and is reluctant to tell his tale of woe. However his fourth wife (Michelle Fairley) convinces him because of their pecuniary predicament. Thomas was a 14 year old "Greenhorn" (Tom Holland) at the time and tells the story as a conflict between the privileged captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) and a disgruntle first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) who was promised his own ship. As Pollard remarks, "Some are born to the job, some born into it." Thomas experiences his first "Nantucket sleigh ride" and gets to do all the dirty jobs.If you know the story they encounter a "demon" whale who hunts and haunts them.The story was well done and well acted if slightly inaccurate. Both Chase and Nickerson wrote accounts of the story and Melville used Chase's account for his inspiration. The interview appears to be fiction. There is a late emotional scene involving the Captain's cousin that wasn't quite accurate, but the results were the same.Good sea drama and half decent action flick.

morrison-dylan-fan After watching the marvellous 1976 film Bartleby,I started looking for other Herman Melville-related projects. Trying to sail in a different direction to the famous productions of Moby Dick,I was intrigued to find a flick about the inspiration behind Melville's book,which led to me meeting the real Captain Ahab.The plot-1850:Wanting to build on the outline for his next set-at sea novel, author Herman Melville tracks down Thomas Nickerson,a former cabin boy who is the only living survivor of the sinking of the Essex. Pushed with money by Melville,Nickerson begins telling his tale.1820:Cashing in on the whale oil gold rush, whaling company includes some quick additions to the Essex so it can go whale hunting. Hiring Nickerson as a cabin boy,the company get Owen Chase as First Mate and George Pollard as Captain. Going deep into the Offshore Grounds,the crew try to catch a white whale,but fail to,and are left with a broken ship. Stranded in the middle of the sea,the crew enter the heart of darkness of the ocean.View on the film:Racing down from the race tracks of Rush with the same lead actor and cameraman,director Ron Howard & cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle ride the wave of "Golden Age" Hollywood epics, where sweeping crane shots over the beautiful Canary Islands and very well done earthy CGI make the ocean go as far across the screen as the eye can see.Harpooning the crew into the depths of the sea,Howard washes the bright blockbuster blue away for over saturated burning yellows and blood reds dehydrating any memory of adventure from the crew.Altering the fascinating real story behind Nickerson's autobiography (he wrote it in 1876,and it remained lost until 1960!) the screenplay by Charles Leavitt/ Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver brings to shore the friction Chase and Pollard over who should be the captain,whilst the crew keep their eyes on the task at hand. Carving out the boys own Adventure into incredibly dark themes that include suicide,the writers give the months lost at sea a real weight,where the dialogue,and the life drain out of the survivors.Reuniting with Howard, Chris Hemsworth gives Chase a salty gravitas,which Hemsworth uses as a uniting glue among the others. Following orders from Benjamin Walker's slick Pollard, Tom Holland wonderfully grinds down the wide-eyed innocence of young Nickerson,as he enters the belly of the beast.