In 1851 Herman Melville published one of the great literary masterpieces, Moby Dick, which tells the story of a whaler ship’s captain called Ahab who becomes obsessed with hunting down and killing his whale nemesis, which had sank his last boat and left him with only one leg. A lot of its inspiration comes from his own experiences on a whaler ship during the 1840s, along with biblical whale stories and two real life accounts of ferocious whales that attacked ships with seemingly intentional ferocity.
One of these was an albino whale called Mocha Dick, with obvious similarities to the whale in the book, and the second is the voyage of the Essex whaler ship, which was sank by an attacking sperm whale off the coast of South America on an ill-fated and foolish voyage out in the Pacific Ocean. It’s the latter account of misadventure which has now been adapted in the upcoming Ron Howard film, In The Heart Of The Sea, but for us the big question is whether or not the subject matter lives up to the standard of his previous biographical work in Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon and Rush.
Whaling isn’t really the kind of profession we’re all that keen on glorifying and from the look of the trailer below it would appear that there’s an element of that to the film; “Ooh, look at these brave, chiseled heroes of the sea; didn’t they have a torrid time of it with that git of a whale?” The answer is yes they did, but they were more akin to barbarian idiots that got their comeuppance from what we’ve been able to read and we’re surprised it’s been used as the foundation of the latest Ron Howard outing.
On the other hand, there’s always been a certain challenging nature to his films, so maybe it’s the same here, but we’re not too sure it’s going to do enough to paint the picture in the appropriate light. He’s also famous for covering adversarial situations and battling through difficult situations, so it’s not entirely out of touch with his back catalogue; it’s just that previously there’s been a lot more credibility in the choice of topics.
Release date
Cinema: The historical dramatisation had its UK release date on Saturday the 26th December 2015, following on from the US box office premier on the 11th December 2015. It’s an unusual time of year for a film about whaling, arson and cannibalism, but if that’s what you wanted to spend the Christmas period watching then maybe you didn’t really get into the spirit of the season. On the up side, you did get to see it all in screen popping 3D, which could look quite cool for some of the scenes, but then completely unnecessary for the more desperate aspects of the film.
DVD, Blu-ray and digital download: For anyone sadistic enough to want to watch is all on repeat, or for people that skipped it’s delights during the heart of the holiday festivities who want to see what all the fuss is about, the DVD, Blu-ray and digital download release will be on the 2nd May 2016 in the UK, following its arrival in North America on the 8th March 2016.
Story
The story of In The Heart Of The Sea is based on the book of the same name by Nathaniel Philbrich, which itself is based on the account of the disaster by First Mate Owen Chase in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. On a long and tortuous voyage of whale slaughter, turtle decimation and island burning, an inept and wayward crew find themselves at the unrelenting mercy of an enraged sperm whale that seemingly took stock of their lifelong destruction quotient, squared itself with the ship in its sights and powered forward to deliver a thunderous head on ramming collision, dealing an important blow for animal kind throughout the ages. The second of these impacts subsequently wrecked the ship, leaving the crew with just a few small whaleboats to cling to and an unforgiving challenge of survival ahead of them. Good luck fellers.
Cast
An ensemble cast has been put together for the seafaring film, which includes Chris Hemsworth (Avengers: Age Of Ultron), as First Mate Owen Chase, Cillian Murphy (In Time) as Second Mate Matthew Joy and Ben Wishaw (SPECTRE) as Herman Melville. Tom Holland, who you might know as the upcoming new Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War, plays the ship’s cabin boy Thomas, Brendan Gleeson (Suffragette (2015)) plays his older incarnation, Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) plays the luckless Captain Pollard and Charlotte Riley (Edge Of Tomorrow) plays Chase’s left at home wife, Peggy.
Production
Ron Howard directs the film, with the screenplay written by Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond), who also worked on the story with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The film has been produced by Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind, Rush), Ron Howard, Will Ward, Joe Roth (Oz The Great And Powerful) and Paula Weinstein (Blood Diamond). Bruce Berman, Sarah Bradshaw, Erica Huggins, Palak Patel and David Bergstein are executive producers.
The creative team also includes Oscar-winning director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle (Dredd), production designer Mark Tildesley, Oscar-winning editors Michael Hill (Apollo 13, Rush) and Dan Hanley (Splash, Cacoon, Willow, Backdraft, Far And Away, Apollo 13), costume design from Julian Day (Rush) and composer Roque Baños (Evil Dead).
DVD & Blu-ray special features
The DVD will be released with the following special features:
- Chase & Pollard: A Man of Means and A Man of Courage
The Blu-ray release will include the following special features:
- Whale Tales: Melville’s Untold Story
- The Hard Life of a Whaler
- Chase & Pollard: A Man of Means and A Man of Courage
- Lightning Strikes Twice: The Real-Life Sequel To Moby Dick
- Commanding the Heart of the Sea featurette
- Deleted scenes
- Extended scenes
- Ron Howard: Captain’s Log:
- Intro, Location Scout, First Day of Filming, Into the Tank, Controlled Chaos, Out to Sea, Getting in Ship Shape, Production Wrap, Editorial and Score and Journey’s End
First impressions
We’re not convinced of the merits of In The Heart Of The Sea from the look of the trailer and what we’ve read about the story and history of the real life events it’s based on. The cast and production team behind it are strong, and the fact that so many of them have worked together previously on successful releases like Rush and A Beautiful Mind should also indicate that there’s a lot of quality behind the film.
The subject matter is probably our biggest bug bear, but then it sort of fits in with Ron Howard’s adversaries, survivors, sinners and saints back catalogue. The visuals are already looking impressive and that could be its biggest saving grace, but we can’t help but think that there’s plenty of other maritime disaster stories that could have been covered that don’t feature quite such a bumbling group of animal killing plonkers.
