Stirring depth

Johnson Thomas

When a Harry Potter actor (Tom Felton who plays Draco Malfoy in the popular cinematic series), turns his attention to a World War II-based survivalist drama on the high seas, he certainly seems to have come-of-age.
Arriving just a few weeks later than Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, which also featured a sequence involving a life raft adrift in the Pacific ocean during WWII, Against The Sun is a harrowing true story of three US Navy airmen who crash land their torpedo bomber in the South Pacific and find themselves on a tiny life-raft, surrounded by open ocean with no food, no water and absolutely no hope of rescue.
Just imagine yourself adrift on a life-raft bang in the middle of 63 million square miles of never- ending sea perhaps larger even than every single square inch of dry land on the entire planet, and you will understand the magnitude of sheer desperation the trio must have experienced! And frankly no film can ever bring that home to you even if the makers try hard enough. While Unbroken ventured past the surviving-at-sea drama to capture, incarceration and torture sequences, Against The Sun sticks with just survival and it’s a tough one to sit through. In fact, director Brian Falk does well to make the experience a near real one, showing the three fight the inclement elements and themselves to survive an ordeal that even the most resilient would have found difficult to. The film focuses only on the three central characters and stays with them the entire way. Against the most incredible odds, these three, unfamiliar to each other,  must survive storms, sharks, starvation and each other, as they sail more than a thousand miles to safety.
The film is based on Robert Trumbull’s The Raft, a true account of a harrowing 34-day ordeal. On January 16, 1942, pilot Harold Dixon (Garret Dillahunt), bombardier Tony Pastula (Tom Felton) and radioman Gene Aldrich (Jake Abel) crash-landed a Douglas Devastator torpedo bomber, which ran out of fuel, without sighting the Enterprise (the only US Ship stationed for reconnaissance) in the Pacific Ocean. And all they have is a life-raft; no food, no flares, no water, no supplies — all of which had gone down with the plane.
In terms of thematic content Against The Sun also shares elements with bigger glossier productions — All Is Lost and Life of Pi —  so comparisons do creep in. Despite this handicap, the film throws-up a stirring experience of survival against all odds with writer-director Brian Falk and co-writer Mark David Keegan staying true to the experience and the struggles thereof with a determination that is praiseworthy. There’s no resorting to unnecessary flashbacks or individual stories to stir up the still waters. The depth comes from the drama between the trio; getting to know their personalities, the dynamics between them and some details from the past. Their relationship while in the raft is the focal point and it never really shifts from that. So the experience for the audience is deeply affecting. You get emotional just seeing them in such deep waters, struggling to eke out methods of survival when there are, apparently, none. The special effects are solid despite the budgetary constraints and the performances absolutely realistic. All three actors lose weight and their starry baggage, to turn on that inner light of talent that makes them one with the characters they play. This is a worthy watch, no doubt about that.