Otherwise known as “the tsunami” movie with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. [I have to say this, because The Impossible is a lousy, forgettable title that tells you nothing about the movie, even people that have watched it sometimes forget what it’s called.] For me, this movie boils down to one fantastic, jaw-on-the-floor sequence, and the rest ranges between mediocre and bad.
What Works: Naomi Watts is nominated for Best Actress this year, and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s not really the best performance from this actress, but she certainly suffers impressively. Still, the best reason to see this film is (ironically) the tsunami sequence, which is spectacular. It comes fairly early on (what it is with dramatic movies like this and Flight using their climax in the first ten minutes?) though, but it’s unquestionably a harrowing, you-are-there sequence. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is lackluster…
What Doesn’t Work: There’s a certain racial cluelessness to this movie, as the film’s setting is Asia, but we’re only asked to care about white European characters. Seriously, it’s not just the white washing of the lead family in the movie (based on a family that is Spanish in real life, tsk-tsk), but the only people we see suffering or losing much are the other white European tourists in the hospital. The Asian characters seem to exist solely to take care of them, and nurse them back to health.
But even more than that, I felt there was a manipulative element to this movie. [The woman behind me cried the entire time…boy is she susceptible to some tear-jerking.] There are just so many scenes staged to obviously get us to cry (at least a dozen different scenes of the different family members reuniting, then separating, then reuniting again) that I began to rebel at the shamelessness.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Why not cast Javier Bardem and other Spanish actors to more accurately portray the real family? Why not show us how the Asian people were affected by the devastation too? Why not shows us just a few less reuniting scenes with tears and swelling music?