MOVIE REVIEW: Adrift

The harrowing true story of Tami Oldham who was adrift in 1983 on the ocean for 41 days after a savage storm nearly destroyed her sail boat.  Tami and Richard met and fell in love, their passion for adventure and exploration lead their romance to blossom into love quickly, and then an offer to sail a friends boat to California changes everything.

Over the last few years there has been a couple of these people on boats against the elements, some have been good like All is Lost, others have been terrible and I’m mentioning The Mercy on that score.  I was never so happy that the ocean claimed a life during a film as I was with that film.  Usually they have long lingering shots of the star looking out across the vastness of the water and this can lead to a lack of understanding of the characters.  You never wish for a giant shark more than during one of these films.

Here Shailene Woodley plays Tami, a young woman with a yearning to see as much as the world as possible.  Doing odd jobs here and there to pay for the next phase of her adventure around the world.  When she meets Sam Claflin who plays Richard and he has his own sail boat and a certain charm about him they hit it off quickly and their romance develops.  Woodley and Sam have this great chemistry together and you do feel that you are watching a couple of fall in love for the first time, which is a nice change, as most of the time there is a lack of said chemistry and the films suffer from it.  You only need to look back at Idris Elba and Kate Winslet in The Mountain Between Us to see that in full effect.  Anyway when friends of Richard offer him a lot of money and first class tickets back from California just to sail their beloved boat it sparks off the chain of events that will change their lives forever.

The survival element of the film was good, but sadly I think that we went over the same ground time and time again, with Richard seemingly close to death after the violent storm, he is little to no use to Tami.  They have little rations and fresh water is running out.  Sadly there is little to nothing new offered to make this film stand out from other survival films.  If it was not for the chemistry between the two stars, and Woodley’s shattered psyche, I’d give this a wide berth.  Woodley has placed behind her the trivial teen hero role from Divergent and is starting to develop into a fine dramatic performer.

I still believe that All is Lost is a superior film when it comes to these types of films, with the pure isolation of Robert Redford’s character giving more tension.  Also with the film announcing that Tami wrote the book that this film is based on right at the start of the film then you lose a lot of that build up of tension anyway.  There are films out this year that I would easily avoid in the future but Adrift isn’t one of them, I mean I’m not going to be going back to the cinema to watch it, but if it’s on TV later in the year I wouldn’t be jumping for the remote control either.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

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Al Mega

I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!

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