ADRIFT
Director: Hans Horn Stars: Eric Dane, Ali Hillis, Kelly Wagner
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
Another picture of an ordeal and struggle for survival. With this kind of film, it is also something of an ordeal to sit through it as we observe the characters, become emotionally involved (or not), wonder what we would do in similar circumstances.
Several years ago there was a film called Deep Water, based on events off the Queensland coast, as a couple were stranded by a tour boat and had to survive water and sharks. It was done in the cinema verite styles, as if it were being filmed as it happened. There is something of this here, but the film has a bigger budget and uses the widescreen process. This gives the ordeal a larger scope. While we watch the different characters in the water, we also look at the group from the different individuals’ point of view.
There is a home movie prologue introducing most of the characters who come across as a young adult take-them-or-leave them group fooling around. (The temptation is to leave them.)
Five years later they go on a weekend cruise. Judging by the boat, nothing could go wrong. And nothing does go wrong with the boat. The fact that they are adrift is due entirely to human stupidity and mistakes. Still, this does not prevent the consequences from being dangerous and harrowing.
The action takes place over 24 hours with six people in the water. Most of the day is calm but there is a night storm and rain. Once the situation is realised, we watch the attempts of the group to get back on board, then the blame and recriminations and the reactions from hysteria to quiet support and stoicism. There are some melodramatic moments and moments of pathos, so that there is some feeling towards the characters’ plight and the drive for survival.
This is a German film, made in Malta, with an American cast, so smoothly done that it looks and sounds like a genuine American film.