Not even Chris Hemsworth wielding a harpoon can pause Ron Howard’s retelling of the Essex of Nantucket account from losing its way in the waves“I married a whaleman.” It sounds like the title of a Roger Corman picture,but it’s a world-weary sigh heaved by Charlotte Riley, pregnant wife of Chris Hemsworth’s Owen Chase, and first mate of the doomed Essex of Nantucket. He’s off on another dangerous voyage on behalf of the greedy jerks that sit behind their desks while good men put their necks on the line. That’s what Chase is thinking,besides, when his promised captaincy is bumped down a peg while to-the-manor born George Pollard Jr (Benjamin Walker) is given command. whether Chase sits this one out, and he’ll get his own commission next time,but will there be a next time with a novice (one who is just a beginner at some activity requiring skill and experience) captain running things? This setup is told in flashback, from one of the few survivors of the Essex, and Thomas Nickerson,played with a thousand-league stare by Brendon Gleeson as a broken older man, and scrappy Tom Holland (the unusual Spider-Man!) as a wide-eyed tot taking his first Nantucket sleighrides. Nickerson is spilling his guts to a writer of some renown long obsessed with the tale of the Essex. One might even call the fate of this ship his personal white whale. You might also call the writer Herman Melville, and researching what will eventually be Moby-Dick. (The film itself is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s nonfiction book of the same title.)Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com