Survival drama is cast ‘Adrift’
I don’t know what’s in the water. Well, actually, I do know what’s in the water. It’s attractive young women. Blake Lively vs. a shark in “The Shallows,” Mandy Moore vs. many sharks in “47 Metres Down” and now Shailene Woodley as worldtraveling drifter Tami Oldham in the fact-based survival drama “Adrift.”
Tami’s a boatyard worker in 1983 from a troubled home in San Diego. She is in Tahiti when she first meets very handsome Eng- lishman Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin, “Me Before You”). Richard pilots a beautiful sailboat, which he has built himself, and they “meet cute” a la typical romantic comedies when she helps him dock his vessel and later accepts a dinner on board.
But this is no ordinary romantic comedy. “Adrift,” which was directed by Icelander Baltasar Kormakur (“Everest”) and features terrific ocean storm visuals by the legendary director of photography Robert Richardson, starts with harrowing scenes of Tami waking up alone on the boat, which is wrecked after a storm and sinking, and she tries to find out what happened to Richard and keep the boat afloat. Yes, this is one of those “three weeks earlier” movies that whip-snaps back and forth from scenes of the budding and then bloomed romance to scenes of the desperate attempt to stay alive.
Also in early scenes, Tami finds Richard clinging
to the ship’s dingy, his ribs and leg shattered, and tries to keep him alive while piloting the crippled vessel to Hawaii, their only chance to survive, while their rations and hopes dwindle. “Adrift” will remind some of the great 2013 J.C. Chandor drama “All Is Lost,” with Robert Redford as a sole sailor on a sinking sailboat, although no one was eager to see Redford in a swimsuit in that film.
Woodley (TV’s excellent “Pretty Little Lies” and the awful “Insurgent” films) brings her unusual charisma and appeal to the role of Tami (Richard compares her to “a bloke”) and makes you believe she could travel the world alone, only to give it up for the perfect romantic match, as well as make major repairs to a badly damaged sailboat. Claflin, who has played the ridiculously named mancandy Finnick Odair in the “Hunger Games” films, is also amenable as Richard, if also arguably prettier than his co-star.
The problem with “Adrift” is the screenplay by Aaron and Jordan Kandell (“Moana”) and David Branson Smith (“Ingrid Goes West”), which will remind some of the recent bad Idris Elba-Kate Winslet survival drama “The Mountain Between Us” and is too full of cliches and shouted “woos” and squealing for its own, and our, good. A scene in which Richard and Tami argue over the color of a sunset is so lame, you know they are going to repeat it later. It was at this point that I hoped Tami would just eat Richard a la a classic Monty Python skit and get “Adrift” over with.
(“Adrift” contains gruesome images, profanity, brief nudity and drug use.)