The Impossible may sometimes become possible

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2013)

Mainly when family love and human solidarity are at work. This is the true story (so it's said) of a family of five (father, mother and three small children) that goes on what was intended to be relaxing holidays in a seaside resort in Thailand but is suddenly caught by a horrible tsunami that puts them on the verge of losing their lives in the question of a couple of hours or even less. The mother and the eldest son are swept miles away by the razing stream while the father and the other two children manage to keep themselves more or less unhurt by managing to climb to trees around the resort. The mother is however severely wounded by hitting herself to several heavy objects on her forced and violent course. Each of these two groups know nothing of what happened to the other and even suspect that the others could be dead. Although a tsunami is a rare phenomenon the story in its terms is a normal one I mean that in any similar circumstances it's normal that each member of a family who is separated from others by a catastrophe does all efforts to look for and find the others. But the great merit of the film resides not only on the dramatic scenes and episodes of the desperate father's search of his wife and eldest son but also on the intense emotional happenings and experiences in which the story is told and develops itself till in the end the five members of the family are again reunited due also to a few coincidences and incidental events (i. e. the difficulty in starting the engine of the small lorry where the father is to be carried away of the hospital where his wife and son were without having being able of finding them, which delays its departure and allows that father and son meet at last)which are nevertheless totally acceptable in terms of verisimilitude. And the images of the tsunami razing everything in its course and of the fight of mother and son against its violent and tumultuous stream are appalling and and overwhelming and filmed with unsurpassable realism. To end it up we must refer the acting which is very good mainly of the eldest boy (Lucas, performed by the young Tom Holland).