HEMSWORTH AT SEA
Ron Howard’s Moby-Dick prequel is adrift, but still a mostly seaworthy whale tale,
A whale of a tale becomes more like a minnow of one for In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard’s ultimately adrift but still seaworthy Moby-Dick prequel.
Based on the true story of the Essex, a Nantucket whaler destroyed in 1820 by an enormous leviathan, it’s accurately presented as the inspiration for Herman Melville’s titanic novel of maritime adventure.
What the picture could have used was a lot more whale.
This is a rare example when the hide-the-monster mantra so effective to horror doesn’t apply. The moments when the angry white-grey beast is vengefully attacking the Essex and its crew are enthralling, even knowing that CGI is behind Anthony Dod Mantle’s muscular lens.
But the becalming time spent before and after might have some viewers wishing they could bail for the exits.
Ben Whishaw plays an inquiring Melville and Brendan Gleeson the prodded and haunted Essex survivor Tom Nickerson in the prologue and epilogue, with the rest of the saga being told in flashback to 30 years earlier.
This framing technique works well enough, even if Tom Holland, who plays the younger version of Nickerson, doesn’t look at all like Gleeson.
Under Howard’s sturdy but unflashy command, and with a script by Blood Diamond’s Charles Leavitt (no Melville, he), the 3D camera whisks us to the early 19th century, when whale oil was essential for lighting cities, and adventurers such as Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) were eager to hunt for it.
Chase has a fetching young wife, but he also has a love for the sea and for whaling, and he’s highly skilled at both pursuits.
He’s expecting to be given command of his own ship, for a two-anda-half-year voyage around South America to gather enough oil to keep streets lit and bankers smiling.
Instead the Essex’s backers give the helm to greenhorn toff George Pollard Jr. (Broadway’s Benjamin Walker), much to Chase’s fury.
But Chase signs on for the voyage regardless, in part because his close friend Matthew Joy (Cillian Murphy) is along for the ride as second mate.
Testosterone dynamics are thus doubled as the men battle both each other and a testy giant whale that has no fear of humans or their harpoons, as the scars on the beast’s back would attest.
Hemsworth swashes good buckle as the determined and resourceful Chase, as strong here as he was in Howard’s racing-car drama Rush. But there’s only so much that he can do with a script that ends up in the lost-at-sea doldrums whenever the big whale is away, with only such joyless pursuits as bickering, insanity and cannibalism to keep boredom at bay.
This whale tale doesn’t blow, but it does sniffle a bit too much.