Two people, a boat, and the open sea. It’s romantic, adventurous, idyllic, even, once you get past the sunburns and the toil. That’s what Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp thought when they set out on a month long journey from Tahiti to San Diego. They were looking to score some quick cash, but what they found instead was a hurricane that threw all their plans overboard.
Based on the memoir Red Sky at Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea, Adrift chronicles these disastrous events and the pair’s preceding romance, but unfortunately there’s no flying, Jack. The film keeps everything rather small in scale, avoiding anything that would remind you of that other massively popular disaster romance at sea. Unfortunately, things stay too small, with the exception of one ridiculously huge pair of binoculars.
I know, the binoculars are not the point of this story, but their eye-catching presence gets at how the film works overall. The details are right but someone wasn’t paying attention to how they all fit together. I’m guessing the binoculars are the kind people used when sailing in the ’80s; director Baltasar Kormákur has done some sailing, after all, but they probably weren’t the correct choice for this film.
Having Shailene Woodley giving it her all, hyperventilating and freaking out on the open sea, then covering her face with binoculars straight out of Willy Wonka’s factory is so tonally discordant that it’s going to be funny to some people (myself included), begging the question of why the hell no one mentioned that they just weren’t right in this case?
Navigating The Storm
A synopsis of this film likely sounds thrilling, but when you sit down in the theater it quickly becomes apparent how little will actually happen. There’s one storm that takes up five to ten minutes followed by a slow wasting away as supplies dwindle. Starving at sea is not the most cinematic story, it turns out, but the screenwriters came up with a clever solution to hide this: a split timeline.
That’s right, Adrift is not told linearly, instead weaving together a section that starts with Tami and Richard meeting in Tahiti with another that begins immediately after the storm. The latter is the one we are dropped into first, following the confused Tami as she regains consciousness and must do some quick triage on the ship. It’s a disorienting start and one that lends itself well to the ensuing time jumps.
Turns out this approach allowed the filmmakers to alleviate several problems at once: they were able to build the tension more evenly, inject some humor and life into the wasting away section, and keep the whole thing from sinking into despair. After all, this is still a summer release, so they needed to make the film into a thriller instead of the grinding experience the situation would’ve actually been.
In lesser hands, splitting the timeline could’ve been a disaster, but there’s real deft to the way Kormákur matched shots and spliced the whole thing together. The flashbacks flow more like fevered memories than the meticulously planned trickery they are, showing off formal elements that are far more impressive than you would expect from an early summer thriller.
An Uneven Two-Hander
Not to overstate the actors’ importance, but in a film where two people are isolated at sea for long periods of time, the performances are key to making the whole thing work. They have to sell the dire straights and the determination to keep going, and in this case, they also have to sell the quick romance that put them in this situation together. Unfortunately, the two leads took different approaches when trying to pull all this off.
Neither Shailene Woodley or Sam Claflin take any wrong steps per se, they just don’t quite meld together. Claflin, whose character spends much of the movie too injured to do anything, puts his charm on full blast to ensure Richard’s presence never fades into the background. Meanwhile, Woodley is doing her usual low-key earthiness, which works against some of the film’s more contrived elements.
The clash nearly kills the romance and the film flounders because of it. Sure, the two are affable together, but it’s hard to buy them as madly in love. They seem too weirdly separate, and with this shaky basis, most of the film’s emotional undercurrents are severely muted.
Punching Up The Drama
Even without the romance entirely working, Kormákur has a crowd-pleasing way of presenting stories, whittling them down to the thrills and chills the audience wants. It’s refreshing in the age of overdone blockbusters to give yourself to a filmmaker that won’t waste your time, and that’s exactly who Kormákur is.
I’ve already mention the way the film is structured, which contributes greatly to this effect, but there are smaller things to nibble on that turn out to be just as satisfying. That whirlwind romance is so cheesy that the characters actually poke fun at themselves within the film, and while that doesn’t entirely excuse the artifice, it does invite the audience to be a bit of a co-conspirator in turning this harrowing tale into a fun little theater experience.
When the storm finally comes and Kormákur unleashes his skill at twisting primal fears into high drama, the audience is primed to just go along for the ride. The whole sequence is overtly manipulative, but oh boy is it thrilling.
Adrift: An Enjoyable But Disposal Disaster Romance
I rarely detect thoughtful ambition in Kormákur’s work, and Adrift is no exception. It sets out to entertain, and in its modest way, it does. Not every element works and there’s a far more interesting story to tell here, but the rush of watching a storm staged by skilled filmmakers is undeniable. Adrift may not be everything you want it to be, but it’s just enough to be satisfying.
Do you think Kormakur and his team did enough to make this film work? What are some of your favorite disaster romances? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
Adrift was released in the US on June 1st, 2018 and will be released in the UK on June 29th, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.
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