This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 7, 2015.

Director: Ron Howard 

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, Tom Holland

It is the little known true story behind one of the world’s most read tales — the story of the ill-fated Essex, documented in Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. It is almost unbelievable, in a way, that it would make cinematic gold. 

That’s exactly what acclaimed film director Ron Howard decided to do. Into The Heart of the Sea takes us back to the epic saga of a maritime disaster that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, in a detailed retelling that saw its star, Chris Hemsworth, who plays first mate Owen Chase, shrink from his mythical Norse god-like chiselled physique down to a more suitable lost-at-sea sailor as the film progressed. 

At the height of the whaling industry in the 19th century, ill-fated New England whaling ship Essex set sail from Nantucket, eventually sank from an unprecedented attack by a sperm whale. The ship crew’s survival in the aftermath is told for the first time, in a man versus wild journey that includes storms, more attacks and starvation. 

Howard went to great lengths to recreate the incident and journey with authenticity, including a life-sized replica of the original ship and a five-week shoot in the open waters off La Gomera, Canary Islands. The cast were put through gruelling training for working on deck, led by survival consultant and survivor of a shipwreck of his own, Steven Callahan. 

The film was also shot almost entirely in sequence, as the cast was required to lose weight as the film went along. In the studio, a replica of the ship was created in its entirety, with mechanisms incorporated to allow it to tilt and realign when necessary. The experience, as the actors say post-filming, is gruelling and exacting, with wind and water slamming into them as the director calls ‘action’. 

It’s disappointing then, that despite all efforts, and certainly a noble intention in Howard’s motivation to relate a remarkable tale of a time where men made a thriving industry hunting nature’s biggest beasts for oil, of survival and human triumph, of the unfathomable reaction by a sperm whale that seemed to have human-like will — or perhaps because he tried to do it all, that Into The Heart of the Sea ultimately made less than a splash. 

Departing from his usual roles, Hemsworth, who actually proposed the film to Howard, is sturdy as Chase, a man that made his way — one whale at a time — to the top, only to be denied captaincy in favour of George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), a greenhorn from a pedigree whaling family. Although Hemsworth was the star of the film, the other cast members held their own as much as their limited characterisation would allow them. 

There are Howard’s unmistakable touches: an undertone of poignancy with moments of sublime clarity, for example, the film succeeded in creating neither an adventure thriller blockbuster, nor a human drama of much depth. 

The action and effects are unremarkable, and at times felt almost as dated as the story’s timeline. Maybe the story of a leviathan whale such as this is just too fantastical for a realistic portrayal. Nevertheless, there is enough in the tale to carry the film on its own, but not quite enough in the film to echo in its aftermath.