Best docu-drama since THE PERFECT STORM

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2013)

After last week's LIFE OF PI, another film that relies for its impact on spectacular Special Effects. Based on the true story of a Spanish family who miraculously survived the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which killed over 200,000 people, THE IMPOSSIBLE makes them an English family, the Bennetts, who are in and around the swimming pool of their beach-side hotel on a Thai island when the great wave hits.
The film has been criticised for concentrating on the fate of one white family when so many (mostly non-white ) people died in the disaster, but the director gives us glimpses of others caught up in this terrible event (some, we are told, played by people who were really there). And the dramatic focus on the Bennetts gives the viewer a sense of involvement: this could have been ME - and MY FAMILY. There are a couple of moments when the script seems to produce too many coincidences, and some of the scenes are unashamedly manipulative - tears are literally jerked out of the viewer.
The film's 114 minutes fairly fly by. The family is very easy to "identify with". Naomi Watts and Tom Holland give vividly believable performances. The moment when the tsunami hits the resort has the most awesome impact since the sonically-induced disturbances in creaky old EARTHQUAKE (1974). This is the most exciting and most persuasive 'docu- drama' since THE PERFECT STORM. It's kind of awful to admit this, but I really enjoyed being taken back to the tsunami!