Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Cast:Â Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin, Grace Palmer, Jeffrey Thomas, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Tami Ashcraft
Rating: 12A
Running time: 96 mins
Release date:Â 29/06/2018
Coming soon after the release of THE MERCY, another true sea-faring story which chronicle Donald Crowhurst’s solo attempt to navigate the globe starring Colin Firth, ADRIFT arrives on screens in the UK.
Co-produced by and starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin, ADRIFT tells of the trials and tribulations of Tami Oldham (Woodley) and Richard Sharp (Claflin) who decided to sail from Tahiti to San Diego in 1983. Based on Oldham’s official account, RED SKY IN MOURNING, it moves back and forth between the unravelling disaster at sea for the sail-mad duo and how their relationship began and evolved beforehand.
Tami is an adventurous soul, travelling as far as possible from her home town of San Diego, and whilst stopping off in Tahiti, decides to find work helping out on boats and such-like. Enter Richard arriving with his stylish boat. They connect and gel and go on romantic soirees to the locality, before Richard accepts an offer of $10,000 dollars to sail across the Pacific in a boat belonging to a couple, coaxing Tami into being part of his crew and creating a major ambition to travel that little bit extra.
However, Tami is not so keen initially on the idea, given that the boat will take her back to a place she is not quite ready to face again, but the experience of seeing more of the world proves too good to resist….
ADRIFT is a compelling achievement of film-making and hits the right current thanks to some excellent physical and optical effects. Inevitably, it will draw comparisons with THE MERCY and that is understandable.
However, ADRIFT scores bigger than THE MERCY, thanks to the two lead performances of Woodley and Claflin and thanks to Baltasar Kormakur’s involving direction, the film never veers off course into JAWS / OPEN WATER cliches, relying on the human performances that are the backbone of the film. Woodley gives one of her best performances to date and this film will certainly not do her producing ambitions any harm.
