All Is Lost (2013) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Drama

Academy Award winner Robert Redford stars in All Is Lost, an open-water thriller about one man's battle for survival against the elements after his sailboat is destroyed at sea. Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.

Storyline: Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner's intuition and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest. Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face. Written by Roadside Attractions

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman on February 7, 2014 -- What a difference a mere few weeks can make. As recently as December 2013, trade publications like Variety were full of speculation that this year's Academy Awards would fête two lead performances that were more or less solo turns with little to no dialogue. The female side of this equation was Sandra Bullock in Gravity, while the supposed male honoree was deemed to be Robert Redford in All is Lost. Bullock is still in the running, and may indeed take home her second statuette for her adrenaline pumping role as newbie astronaut Ryan Stone, though the smart money is probably on Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine (a win which may be even more probable now, with some more prurient types wanting to see how she'll handle the "Woody Allen issue" in her acceptance speech). But Robert Redford? He didn't even snag a nomination, something the iconic actor took in stride after the nominees were announced, laying the blame squarely on an ineffective marketing campaign. It's too bad, really, for All is Lost is certainly a tour de force from a pure performance perspective. Redford is really the only character on screen for the film's running time, and as mentioned above, there's barely a word of dialogue uttered throughout the entire film. What we're left with instead is an incredibly visceral story of survival against incredible odds. Sound familiar? Of course it does—this film plays like a waterlogged cousin of Gravity. All is Lost also features a similar kind of technical mastery. While Gravity's Alfonso Cuarón and his team spectacularly recreated the daunting problems Ryan faced in a weightless environment, they at least had the benefit of being able to digitally manipulate the cinematic environment in several cogent ways to help foster that illusion. All is Lost is obviously completely earthbound, and while much of the film was evidently done in a tank, there's still somehow a more viscerally "real" feeling to seeing raging water pouring over the film's unnamed hero than there perhaps is in the Cuarón film. Interestingly, there's another connection between the films, in terms of a major plot conceit both share: in both of these outings, it's "junk" floating around indiscriminately that wreaks the havoc from which the central characters spend the rest of the films trying to recover.

Writer-director J.C. Chandor, who made a bit of a (different kind of) splash a couple of years ago with Margin Call (a film I didn't think was quite the unabashed masterpiece that others evidently did), starts All is Lost at the supposed end of the story. We hear Redford's voice over narration, reading what is evidently a goodbye note to the world, insisting that he had "tried". The film then segues back to the beginning of the character's harrowing travails. It turns out that the man, a solo sailor aboard a large and well appointed yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean, had collided with an abandoned shipping container in the middle of the night. The man wakes up to find the hull of his boat seriously compromised.

Chandor takes the man through his paces—repeatedly—as repair efforts present one obstacle after another to overcome. Redford, wordless, establishes instantly that the man is resourceful but also frightened and increasingly desperate. While the man is initially able to at least keep the boat afloat (if only barely), he's hobbled by damaged radio equipment, which makes contacting the outside world impossible, and then, in a devastating blow, a ferocious storm which arrives and leaves him with a diminishing chance of survival.

Much like Ryan in Gravity, the man in All is Lost has to continually improvise, fashioning items out of found objects and moving from venue to venue as he attempts to weather the elements. Unlike Cuarón's formulation, however, the man has literally no contact with anyone, despite his best efforts. It's here that the film really proves its ingenuity as well as providing Redford with one of the greatest showcases of his long and eventful career. Gravity at least gives Ryan some other people to interact with at the beginning of the story, and a couple of brief interactions after that, but the man is, indeed, a man alone. There is one fleeting moment partway through the film where it seems like contact might be achieved, if only for an instant, but those hopes are dashed about as quickly as they are raised.

Chandor is on the record (including here on the Blu-ray) stating he had deep misgivings that the basic concept of All is Lost was too simple to sustain a full length feature. It's especially notable that Chandor knew going in that his one and only character would not have the benefit of interacting with other humans (as in Gravity) or even personified inanimate objects (like Tom Hanks did with "Wilson" in the long solo section of Cast Away). He needn't have worried. This is one of the most audaciously exciting and ultimately moving pieces in recent memory. Anchored (no pun intended) by an absolutely commanding performance by Redford—who delivers it all without speaking, for the most part—the film is not only a testament to the human spirit, but to the craft of filmmaking as well.

There's no accounting for the vagaries of the film industry. Gravity took the movie world by storm this past year, while All is Lost seems to already be an also ran. This is a film that matches Gravity's majesty and celebration of the resiliency of the human spirit, and technically it's certainly close to being in the same league. If you can stand this much adrenaline in one sitting, this would make an excellent double feature with the Bullock film. The Blu-ray offers fantastic video and reference quality audio and the supplements, while relatively slight, are also very good. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -2.4- All Is Lost is very much Redford's triumph. With all eyes glued on "Our Man's" dilemma, and every mind wondering if he'll manage to cheat death it shows our hero as brilliantly human example of cresting and plummeting, cresting and plummeting. I, however, kept snapping back to what I considered to be plot holes. These holes might have been explained away in a novel or if there had been a voiceover to explain them, but they weren't. If you plan on watching this film I suggest you stop reading now because these questions can be considered --- spoilers ahead ---. Why was there no emergency beacon on board the sailing yacht? Why was there no emergency beacon that automatically activates when the life raft was inflated? Why did he use a hand held flare at the first ship instead of the shooting flare which he used for the second ship (daylight maybe)? The yacht seems to have all the necessary safety equipment except for the ones most needed. Almost all emergency maritime equipment is at least water resistant if not water proof. All of these questions kept cropping up in my head and kept me from enjoying the film as much as the brilliant presentation should have demanded. It actually was a good film that without the aforementioned plot holes would have gotten a lot higher rating.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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