A Curate's Egg of a movie

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2013)

The actual tsunami is well done; this and the scenes immediately after are gruelling and hard to watch - lots of blood and pain, near-drowning etc. Then the movie settles down into an old-fashioned 'search for lost family members' type of pic with all the sentimental manipulation that involves. Much of the film leaves a poor impression - it replaces the actual Spanish family with a classic middle-class English whose members display all the mannerisms and behaviour you would expect right down to the heroic eldest son who saves his mother etc (Admittedly a fine performance from young Tom Holland). The film is blatantly manipulative, the music swells in all the expected places and so it's hard to feel genuinely moved by the family's plight. Just as irritating is the fact that much of the filming is by hand-held camera and after half-an-hour or so I began to feel distinctly queasy. I really do wish directors would put out of their heads the notion that realism can only be depicted by use of the hand-held camera.