Joe Carnahan has made a few great films, especially The Grey. If you forgive that film taking liberties with the behaviour of wolves, it's gripping, thematically dense, and rich in character detail; if you're partial to outdoor ordeal films (as I am), it's kind of essential viewing. It's the only movie of is I've loved, but But I've liked enough of his films that I did a "top Joe Carnahan movies" post awhile back, taking in my five favourite films of his, and sticking The Rip in the #6 slot.
Probably The Rip has fallen in my estimation, based on subsequent reflection and a few somewhat scathing reviews I read after I wrote that piece, but the top 5 (The Grey, The A-Team, Wheelman -- which he didn't actually direct -- Boss Level and Narc) still remain up there in my estimation as some of the best genre exercises of recent years.
I'm not going to try to assign a slot to Not Without Hope, however. It's mostly quite well made, has some gripping visuals, and is engaging (a punnier writer would say "immersive") while it lasts, but it's also sorely lacking the writerly flair, rich human detail, and thematic punch that make The Grey so re-watchable. It really and truly is about a group of men who go fishing, get caught in a storm, endure a nautical disaster, and have to fight for survival, all of which is interesting enough on its own, I suppose...
...But it's also exactly all you get. There is one -- count'em one -- moment that achieves something beyond telling its meat-and-potatoes survival-at-sea story, where the surviving men witness a cache of their sandwiches float from under their capsized boat to the surface, bobbing just out of reach in the waves, just as a few sharks start to circle the boat. The men's hunger resonates off the sharks hunger and made me briefly laugh aloud; it's the most poetic moment in the film.
Was there anything else to take away from the film? I guess I didn't realize that being an athlete could be a liability in the face of hypothermia, either, but I am, shall we say, marked safe from the dangers of having an athletic build. So I'm not sure the information is useful; in fact, based on the behaviour of the men in the film, I feel like I have, generally, a better understanding of hypothermia than they did. Surely these four men should have spent every moment they could in a group hug, to share and preserve body warmth. Didn't they see Shoot to Kill?
Otherwise, Not Without Hope achieves very little beyond relaying what happens. Maybe this is because it is based on a true story -- people were hampered in taking liberties? Maybe there was a faith that the story would be gripping enough without much need for artistic license? I dunno.
But the one thing that makes me wonder whether the filmmakers really cared about the movie is a glaring continuity error. We see the men through the first night that they are lost at sea, when visibility at night (in a storm) is made much of; we take in the second day (which is when the shark scene takes place -- clearly in daylight); we have a cut to a night shot of men on a boat looking for them, again remarking on poor visibility, and another night shot involving the men's family's, suggesting that we are now into the second night of their being lost at sea. Then we are back to daylight stuff, with both dialogue and intertitles confirming that this is 24 hours after the accident. Eventually we *do* get to a second night in the water, but the out-of-sequence night shots are never explained or excused; they're just a massive continuity error in the middle of the film, glaring and undeniable (we hit rewind to review that we hadn't missed anything; we had not).
How an error like that actually survives not just a theatrical run but a home video release is beyond me. It's akin to the endless legs Godzilla must have had to wade out over a bottomless trench in that otherwise remarkable recent Japanese Godzilla film, whatever the hell it was called (Godzilla Minus Zero?). It lessens whatever respect I may have had for the film; I can't even say, with a mistake like that so glaringly obvious, that "at least it was well made."
Mostly well-made, I guess. Ah well. I guess I no longer have much interest in following the films of Joe Carnahan.
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