Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Brother Home Entertainment recently released the true-life whale of a tale In the Heart of the Sea on home video. We previously reviewed the film upon its theatrical release but in a nutshell the story focuses on the crew of the Essex, a whaling ship out of Massachusetts in 1820, and their encounter with a massive killer whale seeking revenge for the slaughter of its companions. The story was the basis for Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” and the film brackets the story of the Essex with Melville interviewing one of the ship’s surviving crew members decades later as he looks for an angle on which to hang his seafaring story.
The film was promoted heavily as an action/adventure tale of man against beast, but what ended up on screen was more head-butting between first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker), who had no experience guiding a ship or crew. Chase was expecting to be the captain of the Essex, but the whaling company indulged in a bit of nepotism over experience, and Chase was also just viewed as a farmer who had no business out on the sea, regardless of his overwhelming experience and success on whalers.
Warner Bros. Pictures
The film does have two major scenes of action — a storm that nearly scuttles the ship, and the catastrophic whale attack — but the rest of the film is about survival, with the last third of the film reminiscent of the first half of the World War II drama Unbroken. What really works in the film are the scenes with Melville trying to pry the story out of an aged Tom Nickerson. I could have watched and enjoyed Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson sit at a table and talk more than I did the long periods of nothing happening as the crew of the Essex whithered away.
But with the home video release, you now have the option of deciding for yourself if the film is the great epic it hopes to be, or if it just falls flat and make you wish director Ron Howard had just made his version of “Moby-Dick” instead. Warner Brothers Home Entertainment generously provided HOTCHKA with a Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD combo pack for review, and the presentation of the film is on par with the theatrical presentation. The 1080p HD presentation of the Blu-ray is sharp and clear, with the dark scenes between Melvill and Nickerson featuring deep blacks, and the bright scenes of the marooned sailors crystal clear but never blown out. My only quibble, and it’s not the fault of the Blu-ray mastering, is the sickly greenish-yellow color grading Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle insisted on using for some of the shots on the open sea. It does not serve the film well, looking like some old Technicolor film that all the red has faded from (the movie was shot digitally, by the way).
The Blu-ray 3D version features the same crisp cinematography with an excellent 3D process that greatly expands the vastness of the sea while also indulging in some 3D gimmickry with splashes of water, charging whales and flying harpoons coming off the screen. The film was obviously shot with 3D in mind, even though it was post-converted, and the home video presentation is even better than how it looked theatrically.
Warner Bros. Pictures
The Blu-ray’s audio is a Dolby Atmos track that really kicks into gear during the whale attack and the storm, putting you right in the middle of the action (if you have a surround set-up at home), and also allows the musical score to fill in when there isn’t much else happening. The dialog is clear, although Hemsworth’s accent is quite dodgy as he struggles to keep his native Aussie twang from intruding on a New Englander accent (he apparently arrived on set just hours before he was scheduled to film, so he may not have had enough time to really nail the accent, and it shows).
For a film that under-performed at the box office, the Blu-ray has a very nice collection of extras:
- Ron Howard: Captain’s Log (15:50) – Ron Howard explains the production process and how he used Twitter to log the production. The actors also get a few words in on being put on 500 calorie a day diets. The feature is available to view by segment or with a Play All option.
- Chase & Pollard: A Man of Means and a Man of Courage (7:28) – A brief biographical history of the two main characters with commentary from the book’s author, Ron Howard, Hemsworth and Walker.
- The Hard Life of a Whaler (8:44) – A look at the lives of the historical whalers and the training the film’s cast had to go through to get the details of whaling just right.
- Whale Tales: Melville’s Untold Story (9:13) – A historical account of how Melville combined the fictional story of “Moby-Dick” with the true account of the Essex, and how the film uses “Moby-Dick” for the film’s account of the Essex.
- Commanding the Heart of the Sea (10:25) – A behind-the-scenes look at the practical and CGI effects that helped bring the story to life.
- Lightning Strikes Twice: The Real-Life Sequel to Moby Dick (28:59) – A documentary looking at the shipwreck of a Nantucket whaler off the coast of Hawaii that may be the Two Brothers, which was also captained by the Essex’s George Pollard. Thomas Nickerson was also a member of the crew.
The disk also includes sixteen Deleted Scenes (36:02), four Extended Scenes (7:11), and an Island Montage (3:07) which is just a few minutes of footage of the marooned crew edited together. There is no trailer for the film itself, however the disk auto plays the trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The story of the Essex is a remarkable one and Howard has done a masterful job of bringing it to life. The trailer was a bit misleading so perhaps having not seen that piece of promotional material, a home viewer may get more enjoyment out of the film.
Warner Bros. has once again done an excellent job on bringing one of their films to home video.
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