Emotional and Epic

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2013)

With it being a New Year, I thought I'd go and see a comedy to kick off the 2013 film season. Unfortunately there wasn't any comedies showing at my Cinema so I ended up seeing this film about the 2004 South-East Asian Tsunami which killed over 250,000 people and displaced millions. Not what I had in mind as a cheery film, but oh well....
So basically we have a family that include married couple Henry and Maria Bennett (played Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts), a classic middle- class couple, as suggested by the fact they spend most their time on the plane travelling to Thailand worrying if they set the alarm to their house back in Japan, and also their three sons all string sentences together without saying ''Bruv'' or ''Innit'', so they must be Middle- Class. Anyway the family arrive at their resort in Thailand, and all is going pleasantly when.....yes arriving in spectacular fashion, almost like the rise of Godzilla, the Tsunami arrives and decimates everything in site. The family is split in the wreckage of it all and the film then deals with them all trying ti locate each other, if they all managed to survive that is....
The film was actually very good, a simple search story made gargantuan by the amazing effects used to portray the actual Tsunami, it literally comes at such a speed and power that leaves you in bewilderment and gives you a better idea that news reports of what it was all like at the time. They also have the classic ''Titanic'' Hollywood orchestra as the soundtrack whilst this is happening just to add to the emotional intensity, alongside top notch acting from McGregor, Watts and Tom Holland as 12 year old son Lucas. The main complaint, and flaw of the film, however lies in the fact we hardly see any actual Asian people, in a film about an Asian tragedy. The main Asians in the film are tribesmen and doctors who seem unable to apply composure or logic to any of the hectic situations occurring, we don't see any Asian characters searching frantically for loved ones or showing pain at losing those they love, unlike our Western Heroes here.
So overall, aside from the debatable premise of casting for the film, which you'd expect from Hollywood, it remains a good, epic, emotional film if you watch it for what it is.
7/10