Adrift *** (2018, Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin, Grace Palmer) – Movie Review

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s real-life survival story Adrift is gripping, powerful and disturbing, and scarily realistic, propelled with two attractive star performances by Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as avid sailors Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp who fall in love and then embark on what is supposed to be a carefree journey across the ocean.

But soon they sail into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in history, which leaves Tami to awaken to a ruined boat and looking for Richard. Tami has no hope of rescue and must somehow sail on to find dry land.

Sam Claflin and Shailene Woodley star in Adrift.

The couple’s flashback-told love story is appealing enough, but essentially ordinary. Woodley and Claflin are good actors and give capable turns but the situations and dialogue they have to play are, like Norfolk, very flat, as flat a ride as the water stuff is a rollercoaster of a trip.

It is the ocean sequences, which make up most of the movie, that count, making some breathtaking moments, with the sea as the third star of the movie, and Kormákur making the most of it, and lavishly showing his love for it. But, of course, it is a very dangerous lover. The true story itself, told from Tami’s point of view, is perhaps not quite so thrilling, but is it still quite inspiring and hard to forget.

[Spoiler alert]  There is an unexpected twist about three quarters in to the movie that is worthy of Agatha Christie. I am in two minds about this. In one way it is a cheat and in another it is the making of the movie, as the story could be quite mundane otherwise, and this raises the film’s game nicely. Starting with the storm and working back to the love story and forwards to the hurricane’s aftermath work ideally too.

© Derek Winnert Classic Movie Review

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