A gripping tale


Starring: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Marta Etura, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Holland
Rated: 8.5/10
Against all odds and a family reunion on the shoulder of a devastating disaster, there is nothing that can stop it from becoming a film for accolades.
The Impossible, based on a true story of a Japan-based American family of husband, wife and their three young boys who went holidaying to a Thai resort and were hit by the tsunami, is quite an emotional thriller, an edge of the seat experience. What happens to them scares you, their fight to survive inspires you to not ever give up and their commitment to each other — and that includes the three boys all under 14, is an ode to strong family ties in a world where everything is breaking down.
It is due to the emotional depth of the storyline that despite the tsunami and its potential to get swept away by a visual treat, the film anchors around only the main characters and their travails once they see that menacing dark monstrous wave coming towards their resort while they are in the swimming pool. Naomi Watts, as the mother who gets the worst hit and gets to see her eldest son’s commitment to her, makes quite an appearance in this one.
The director does well to keep his emotions in check while dealing with a disaster that was so hugely crippling for humanity. The 2004 tsunami took away lakhs of lives, flattened many a nation and instilled a never-before fear in beach holidaymakers and families who live near the sea. Under the circumstances, for the film to stick to just one story would’ve been quite an effort. The others, around this family, were also badly hit, some having lost it all. But they were only used to enhance this particular survival story with all its twists and turns. A very moving film not to be missed.
Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 6th Jaunary, 2013

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Mission impossible: Rogue nation -- Ethan Hunt back with bang

Staring:  Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Jeremy Reyner & Rebecca Ferguson Rated : 8/10 Last time Ethan Hunt had your jaw dropping and you praying fervently for his life when mounted the sky scraping Burj Khalifa in Dubai to dangle from dizzying heights. This time, he does the same — and in all earnestness — when he dangles from the outer door of a military aircraft carrying nerve gas all those 20,000 feet high swaying with terrifying winds, hanging on to dear life literally with his finger nails. This is the fifth time since 1996 that Tom Cruise, as the inscrutable Ethan Hunt, has kept his promise of entertaining his loyal viewers with thrills, fills, kills and a little bit of unsaid romance — of course with a fellow agent. Rogue Nation was initially being touted as the last of the Mission Impossible series but seeing the youthfulness of Hunt, and probably the meticulously ‘kept-high’ entertainment value that this James-Bond lookalike series always delivers, C...
Read more