Chakriya This lost me with Queequeg. Please, a Mexican with bad Maori imitation tattoos and an incomprehensible accent playing a Tongan/Fijian? About as special as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And that pretty much sums up this remake.Yes, the names of the characters are the same. There are even some recognisable plot elements, like that stuff about the whale. And I don't even blame the screenwriters for omitting the 100-odd chapters of description about various forms of blubber. But please, hire a Tongan next time, I'm sure there are a few in California. Hey, get a Samoan if you are really stuck. But at least get the hemisphere right, if nothing else.

ppachura OK, I saw this on cable and only recorded the 2nd half. Considering the other reviewers' bashing of the 1st half, I should be thankful. I really liked Hurt's performance. I had a feeling that Ahab was vulnerable. Maybe that is not historically accurate, because ship's captains are often portrayed as being in absolute control. However, if you are leading your crew to certain doom and neglecting the easy money, then you are likely to have an insurrection. The CGI was fine, no complaints. Its just hard to capture the enormity of the whale, and how terrifying it must be in a small boat with an unpredictable giant toying with you. Its a giant you can only catch a glimpse of in real life, so how do you portray that on a screen ? I just with the there had been a slower ending. After that powerful conclusion, it should have drawn out the scene of Ishmael floating in a vast empty sea to let the audience digest the powerful and terrible tragedy that has just occurred. The sad singing at the end could have really set the tone, but instead they just rolled the credits. If only I could re-edit this film, this could be the one that is required viewing for all English students after reading the book.

echarlesgoodall The story treatment, production, and acting are all very good. The casting is excellent. The dialogue moves well among the characters. The long fiction takes a while to spin out when reading, and the writers have managed to retain the story in an efficient format. The historical background lays easily under the plot and dialogue and in short long shots. The character development and setup are worth the wait for the ocean drama.doubt though that we would find, in the novel or in the time period, statements like "I didn't sign on for this?" and "Are you OK?". OK for example is a modern word that came about in the middle of the last century, not a hundred years before. Nevertheless, the modern attributes to add to the flow and so I don't object.

Steve-on-LI Let me start by quoting Mad Magazine: Call me Fishmeal.As a confirmed middlebrow and devoted Melvillephile, I wish to thank everyone involved in this production for a great, worthy and exciting iteration. A welcome addition to the pantheon. Visually enthralling...and good score.I cant claim to deeply understand Melville -- but i can claim to love him and his work -- in my way. i have been to Arrowhead in Pittsfield MA 2x. I have read a lot of his writing. I love Billy Budd, novella and movie. And I was delighted to just watch my 3rd or 4th version of the majestic and elusive Moby Dick, which i have read 1.5 times and audio-listened once.So.....review? Well because I try not to be doctrinaire, I was fine to "suck up" the sometimes bold liberties taken by the screenwriter, i think mainly in the first hour or so. i got the chills when the camera first panned on the Nantucket dock. i enjoyed revisiting father mapple's ship-as-church. i loved Elijah, Queequeg, Stubb, Steelkilt, and others. Ahab and Ishmael were very good. Mrs Ahab was good, and Starbuck got better when things started to get really diceyi'm sorry but Ahab sometimes looks like a HS cheerleader revving up the team and the fans. i would have rather spent 90 seconds looking at puzzled faces of the crew as Ahab went more and more bonkers, than hear lots of the crew's pep-rally-like, anti-moby dick chanting. I thought of the koolaid distributed by Jim Jones in 1978 at suicidal Jonestown -- when I saw Ahab pass the drinks on the equally suicidal Pequod. i thought of Billy Budd (Melville), and the idea of the follower willing to die for the leaderI thought of billy (and Terrence Stamp) proclaiming 'god bless capain vere' I thought of Benito Cereno...and the amazing steps sometimes taken by the enslaved - in pathetic contrast to the steps not taken by members of the fatally cowed crew of the Pequod -- enabled by a pathetic and self-loathing StarbuckI thought of Jack and Rose when Starbuck last spoke w Pip-- It has many great visual effects, including moby's jaw-dropping rise from the sea at the end of Part 1, and the shattering moment in Part 2 when the great white whale wreaks its own revenge on one of the lowered boats of Ahab's Pequod. The look on the faces of the other crew members says it all I remain a middlebrow, but I do know enough to say that Herman Melville has much to teach us about leadership, sacrifice, power, subservience, rebellion, intercultural relations...And in Moby Dick, we also have a story about humans' unwinnable efforts to conquer nature -- about the emergence of industrial capitalism in the mid 19th c. US -- in any case, as i dip again and again into Melville and Moby Dick, my attention draws more and more...........toward the relationship between the crew and ahab (without minimizing other deep and essential plot elements)melville says: watch this crew get misled to its own death, dear reader - and don't let this happen to youto all involved in this production, i would again say thank you for helping your viewers lock arms with Herman Melville in the never-ending quest for mutual understanding