A group of fresh recruits escape their sinking ship during the Second Wolrd War only to find their makeshift raft under attack by a hungry great white.
This is an interesting film that doesn't quite work. Running a scan 80 minutes minus end credits, the film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.
The first twenty minutes is a recruit training film, as the soldiers are run through their paces by drill sargents. This sets up the tense dynamics between the men. Many of them don't like each other. Its a film set very much in the real world. We then get to the sinking and it's pretty good.
And then then the men are on the raft and the film shifts into unreality. What had been a real world film for the first third becomes something like a Suspiria where the skies are projected colors and the sea is a dead calm studio tank. There are no waves and the raft never moves. Yes, I know it's an artistic choice, but it creates a sense of unreality because there is no sense of the guys being on the sea. It might have worked had the opening not been so genuinely real, but the shift to unreal and allegorical, takes the edge off things.
It's not bad but I was never invested the way I should have been. It's worth seeing but nothing you need to rush out to.
No comments:
Post a Comment