User Reviews

"This is the Virginia Jean with an SOS call...over." After running into a shipping container a relaxing trip in a boat turns into a fight for survival. Left with nothing more then what is on the ship and ruined equipment the sailor (Redford) must do everything he can to stay alive until he can be rescued. Going in I expected this to go one of two ways, either super boring or super intense. After seeing Gravity and how tense that was I was hoping for more of the same. I was let down by that expectation. I will however say that this movie really shows what a great actor Robert Redford is. Movies like Cast Away and Gravity while mainly about someone being alone did have other people in it and had a back story for the person. This one ONLY had Robert Redford and it starts as soon as he hits the tanker. No back story or anything about the character. There is also a total of about 20 words in the movie. All that said by the end you are really rooting for the guy and hope someone finds him. That is the sign of a great actor, being able to make people root for you and feel emotions without words. As good as he was in this though the movie isn't for everyone. It really is just watching someone trying to stay alive in the ocean alone for over an hour and a half. If you think you would be interested then go for it. If you don't then you may be too bored to care about what is going on. Overall, a pretty good movie but it isn't for everyone. I give it a B-.

CONTAINS SPOILERS - Outstanding performance, beautifully underplayed, gripping. This works for me, mostly. It's great in its deliberate confinements. But, as a sailor, I am disappointed.

There are inconsistencies, but even more astounding is the lack of our man's seamanship. Pretending to be a seasoned sailor, he makes quite a fool of himself through horrible negligence: There is no "abandon ship bag", he carries an empty fresh water tank, he uses no sails or the engine during the storm, etc...

• He never wears a PFD/life vest, or a survival suit later on. Interesting survival tactics. Our man goes overboard quite often - and even without drowning!

• What an idiocy to hold your boat with one line while jumping on a container - no secured line, no PFD. Then instead of securing the line, he holds it with one hand while untying the sea anchor from the container (which was minutes ago strong enough to pull the container away). Then he walks both lines back to the boat as if they were chihuahuas. Argh! Honestly, he deserves to fall between boat and container and lose both lines due to rope burn...

• No lever for the manual bilge pump at hand? He carves a piece of wood (probably his flagpole) to be able to pump his vessel empty? Puhleeease.

• I understand his shaving ritual - a last trial to exert some control and composure before the sh%$t hits the fan. He seems to consider his options mostly pretty well, but how stupid is it to start switching sails when the storm is blowing already. The main sail - even when not up - seems to be reefed, but we don't see it really being used, and neither is it ever properly tightened to the boom. This costs him rightfully the mast later on.

• Instead of using a fully reefed mainsail and a storm jib (or the engine) to keep control of his vessel, he just gets sloshed around and can't maneuver at all. No wonder that he gets the big waves fully on the beam.

• He wears only one instead of two tether lines. No jack lines on deck or any click-in points close to the center line of the boat. He attaches himself to the lifelines! Another recipe for disaster. When you go overboard, you almost certainly hang under the water surface and have hardly a chance to get back aboard. Stoooopid. He could be happy if the stanchions broke and release him so that he could make it to the ladder on the stern. But that is probably tied up in a way that he can't release it from the water surface. Another reason to NOT make it.

• Instead of a life-sling system he has just an old horseshoe buoy.

• A hand-held radio would be very valuable when a ship comes right by. Much better than his cheap flares. BTW: Good try to clean his radio with fresh water, but why does he try to fix the antenna connection on the mast top AFTER his radio is toast?

• He jumps (!) without provisions (!) or PFD into his life raft, but leaves it connected, closes the zipper and tried to sleep. If the boat sank, we would be gone, too.

In some details I beg to differ from comments I have seen in other comments:

• A commenter complained that the boat had no self steering mechanism which would be necessary and crucial for a single handed ocean crossing. The boat definitely had one. You see the wind vane behind the stern pulpit, and you also see a line around the steering wheel axle. The vane breaks off after the first storm, the remnants are still visible.

• A commenter complained that the boat had no EPIRB, an "Emergency Position Indicating Beacon". Once activated, it sends out a distress signal per satellite to alert coast guards and passing ships of a disaster at sea. I thought I saw one mounted to the stern pulpit before the first storm. But maybe it was just a man-over-board marker.

• Someone said that there was no dodger to stay in the shade and being protected from spray. I thought I saw one - but it was definitely gone after the first storm.

Our man's radio skills are not exactly text book. The useless boat hook from Worst Marine, and the sextant being unwrapped in the life raft only, were nice details contributing to the characterization of our man. So even for sailors there were some nice hints of cutting corners, hubris and overconfidence. I assume the shortcomings in our man's seamanship were deliberately written into the script - otherwise we would have too much of a superman. If real development happens in this movie, it is probably his ruefulness that he never learned and practiced his stuff in time and went so poorly prepared out to sea.

Some situations get solved too quickly: Bringing down a furled head sail and pulling up a storm jib is a real bummer in a storm, especially alone. Jumping without live vest in a storm out of a life raft to right it? Easy peasy. Anyway, the movie showed sufficiently the exhaustion our man has to go through. Just his overboard experiences (twice from the boat, once from the life raft) are quite implausible. I nearly started laughing when he swam back underwater to his capsized boat and just held on in the cockpit until he was back up and in business.

At least he wore a knife at all times, tied to his pants. Good sailor! Still an interesting movie to see. But as movie with this realistic, not to say naturalistic approach it has certainly some flaws for sailors.

Greetings again from the darkness. In Cast Away, Tom Hanks makes friends with a volleyball. In The Old Man and the Sea, Spencer Tracy talks to the whale. In Harvey, James Steward chats it up with a tall imaginary rabbit! It takes Robert Redford to show us how to face isolation with dignity and silence (save one well-deserved F-word).

Writer/director J.C. Chandor brought us the very good Margin Call (2011), which was filled with many characters and significant dialogue. Here, he delivers a single character and no real dialogue - only the initial log entry and a couple of SOS calls into a short-circuited radio. This is one man's struggle for survival. It's that man vs nature. It's our man facing mortality and isolation.

So you are probably wondering how this can hold your attention for two hours. The real answer is Robert Redford. At age 77, his screen presence is remarkable. Having never been a "showy" actor, his performance and this movie depend on facial expressions, his body language, and mostly his ability to connect with an audience immediately. Technically, the movie is exceptional, especially in sound design and in creating a terrifying and believable situation.

Alex Ebert's music is subtle and effective, but let's get real ... Mr. Redford and his mop of red hair are the reason to see this movie. There is almost no back story on this character, other than what we infer from his opening log entry. We know his "I'm sorry" has many meanings to his family, but we soon realize his will to live probably comes from an internal drive connected to his apology. It's nice to see a role for an older actor that doesn't included stupid humor designed to make kids laugh. Not much humor in this one, but there's no reason to be sorry.

A man is sailing alone and wakes up one morning to find that a shipping container which had been adrift has rammed into his boat, gashing a hole which has allowed water into the boat's cabin.

The damage to the boat is more than superficial as many of the electrical and communications are no longer working, so he doesn't know his exact location, and he cannot communicate with anyone.

When he hits a storm, his situation worsens.......

Its a sound idea, and if it wasn't castaway on the high seas, it would have been more than just the Robert Redford show. Redford is good, he has to be, but sometimes you hear yourself thinking 'yes Robert, you've still got it, you don't have to prove it anymore, stop going into the water'.

One of the big problems is that there is no real danger or peril to the narrative. He hits a couple of storms, does something really silly after (the Burining of the paper is ridiculous) and then finds a solution to a problem.

Its beautiful to look at, some of the underwater shots are awe-inspiring, and the score is suitably haunting.

So all in all, it should have been something really special, but come the end you just keep thinking what happened to the tiger called Richard, and then realise your watching a different film.

Would make a great double bill with The Last Castle, another film where Redford shows he's still got it by taking his shirt off and move a lot of rocks....

I grew up around boats and the ocean and was really looking forward to this movie. There are very few sailing movies and the reviews for this one where all great.

Unfortunately the holes in this movie are far larger than the ones that sunk the yacht. I am very happy to suspend belief in movies that are not meant to be technically realistic, but this movie is based on a real life situation and tries to be realistic but fails miserably.

The trouble starts on the very first scene, the 'sailor' wakes up to find his yacht full of water. It has hit a shipping container and is filling up with water through a large hole. He must have been on the whiskey the night before because apparently he slept right through the crash that tore the hole into the back of the yacht (odd that it caused a hole in the back of the yacht). He stands there looking at the hole in the side of the yacht with water pouring in, just one arms length away from the bilge pump button (a pump designed to work under water to pump water out of the yacht). Does he flick the switch ? No he doesn't bother lifting his arm up and turning on a pump to start pumping the water out of the boat. Of course when he does hit the switch some time latter the pump doesn't work. That would probably indicated a flat battery, but the battery wasn't flat as he used it to power the radio latter on. He never really bothered to try to work out what was up with the bilge pump, instead opting to pump the water out by hand, after having to make a handle for the manual pump (I guess the vandals took the original handle).

After removing the container from the side of the yacht, he then sails away but changes his mind and sails back to the container, leaning to the side of yacht where the hole is, thus letting more water flow in and then literally rams the shipping container that has already nearly sunk him ! Maybe he was still on the whiskey, but this guy really should not be in charge of this yacht.

Then there is the logic behind the broken radio. First up, it is a VHF radio, used for short range communication. At sea a yacht would use a HF radio, but anyway, he manages to get it working and hears voices, but the radio is going on and off. So he climbs the mast to find the antenna unplugged ! If the antenna was unplugged he would not have heard a thing on the radio, unless the transmitting station was right next to him and anyway an unplugged antenna would have nothing to do with the radio turning on and off, which is obviously a result of salt water damage to the radio ! So he plugs the antenna back in and while at the top of the mast notices a storm coming. When he comes back down, does he try the radio that he just spent a great deal of effort supposedly trying to fix ? NO HE HAS A SHAVE ! Where is the logic in it ! He could see the storm coming, yet he does not bother to try the radio again. OK, so the boat sinks, after suffering the huge unluckiness of getting yet another hole (even though the original hole is patched up) and after he makes several more very poor decisions, such as leaving it too late to put the storm sail up, going outside during the massive storm for no apparent reason, leaving the main hatch open etc. So he deploys the life raft, a good idea. He ties the life raft to the yacht and gets into the life raft. Does he cut the line, no. OK so he is going to leave the line attached to the yacht ... pretty dangerous, but I guess he thinks the yacht probably won't sink and he will keep a close eye on it on cut the line if the yacht starts to goes under .... oh no no no, he goes to sleep in the life raft with it attached to the yacht ! There is no point even being in the life raft, if the yacht sinks, he goes down with it. No sailor would ever ever do something so stupid. It just defies basic logic.

There are so many holes in this movie. Even the effects are bad, the rain is always vertical but if there was a storm that was making the sea so rough, there would be high winds and the rain would be more horizontal .. in fact there is really no wind effect anywhere in the movie. Even when he is trying to get the storm sail up it is hardly blowing around. When the storms clears by morning the sea returns to being flat, there is no left over swell, completely unrealistic.

The way the guy moves, so slowly all the time even in critical situation was also very annoying, there is no urgency or sense of panic in it, personally I think the acting was terrible. I have been aboard boats that are taking on water and believe me you do not think, you act.

I can only assume the sailor is either an alcoholic or senile, either way he should not be the captain of anything that floats. He doesn't even bother to equip the yacht with an EPIRB, something that is law in most countries, but common sense to have for anyone going to sea and is something that would have ensured his timely rescue.

A very disappointing movie, obviously made by people who have no idea about the subject matter and seemingly lack basic logic.

After reading a slew of rave reviews I had really high hopes for "All is Lost," particularly Redford's performance. As much as I wanted to like it, I came away somewhat disappointed. With only one character it all depends on Redford. And that's where it falls down. In one sense I agree with Scott. It was Redford playing Redford. He showed grit, determination, skill, an unwillingness to give up, supreme confidence in his own abilities. What he didn't show was emotion. Except for the one moment of the screamed epithet, he showed no fear, anger, panic, sense of desperation, all logical, even likely, in the face of his extreme peril. Even near the end of the film when all seems lost, his face showed nothing except fatigue.

It was just a sense of an older, weather-beaten, journeyman actor going through the motions.

And the film itself displayed little sense of the likely terror of the situation. It was as though the author made a checklist of terrible sea situations and portrayed one set piece after the other, allowing "Our Man" to solve each new problem. Hole in the hull; repair it; check. Waterlogged radio, clean it; possible signal, oh, darn, we'll have to try something else. Terrible storm that threatens everything; work through it; check. And as if one isn't enough, let's do it again. Loss of GPS; let's not only get out that ancient sextant but I'll teach myself how to use it; check. Loss of provisions; just fish around underwater and pull out some cans; check. No water?; I'll create an evaporation system; check. Reel in a fish; oops, grabbed by a shark; check. And so on and on.

It's the Perils of Pauline revisited, but at sea. The photography and effects were cool so it rarely got seriously boring, but after a while I wondered what he would overcome and solve next.

I wasn't particularly troubled by the lack of a back story. A man alone at sea trying to survive against the elements could make – and often has made – a great story. Just not this one.

And I even found the music over the top and too loud, particularly during the calm moments when it apparently was supposed to convey emotion that the character didn't.

I don't want to spoil the ending but even that was pretty well telegraphed. Could it have been otherwise? All in all this is one film that clearly fails to live up to its billing. I'll be really disappointed if Redford gets an Oscar nomination for this poor performance.

I really enjoyed Redford in this role. The lack of any back story has pluses and minuses. You never know why this guy is sailing (around the world?) solo. We never see him make any kind of personal action, like looking at a picture, talking to himself, etc. Tossing away a gift card is the extent of it. But you're certainly drawn into his world, to face the same uncertainties and fears he does. Our unfamiliarity with the situation mirrors his.

As other reviewers and commenters have noted, there's much to question about his seamanship. He's confident and able enough to solo in the middle of the Indian Ocean, but commits several foolish actions like not securing the water. That the crash took out ALL his electronics is a little to convenient, but necessary itself for the story. The whole sextant/navigation makes no sense, particularly since he has no means of propulsion.

This may be the biggest problem. The Cal 39 sailboat has a diesel engine. This is never acknowledged. The damage would not have affected it. Only a REALLY good sailor would try to make this trip solo on sails alone.

That being said, if you enjoy sea or survival stories try this one. Redford makes the film, flaws and all.

Spoilers ho! Wow, the writers really screwed up this film which should have been a lay-up. Did they even bother to talk with a single person who has spent more than an hour on a sailboat or did they just wing it from their experience on some Catalina Island booze cruise? The first problem he faced was an act of god, as they say, and not his fault but just about every problem after that was the result of his own stupidity and very poor seamanship. The movie is like what not to do if you have an emergency in a small boat at sea.

So he hits a container putting a nice hole in his starboard side about 2 feet X 2 feet. No biggie. He has resin to patch it up which he does incompetently. For some reason he loses all electrical power. Why his engine doesn't work isn't explained (and no back-up outboard motor for a yacht this size?).

His sailing skills during the storm were basically non-existent. You don't wait until the excrement hits the fan to put up your storm jib and reef the living daylights out of your mainsail. Once again, what about his engine? To broach a boat of that size you really have to mess up royally, like letting yourself get hit right on the beam with a huge swell. Why would you go below during a storm in the first damn place? Ever heard the expression "All Hands on Deck?" I think that applies here. You can sleep and shave after the squall. In the end the fact that his vessel goes down had little or nothing to do with the hole from the container. He simply screwed up during the storm.

Rule number 1 through 99 is WATER! It's the most important thing to consider when you finally abandon ship. These days with all of the survival foods available you could last for months in a life raft and some people do. Read Adrift where the dude survived for 67 days and crosses the Atlantic after sinking almost immediately after hitting a container in the dead of night. I would imagine that most life rafts come with a solar still water purifier which is little more than a blow-up beach ball. Just why he didn't prep his life boat after he hit the container was something I was wondering about way before his ship sank. His boat had plenty of fresh water and he can't carry 20 gallons on to the raft? They probably felt the dire water situation added drama but it made him look like a clumsy child. His crappy solar still wouldn't produce enough to keep him alive long.

I doubt that anyone has ever learned celestial navigation on their own in a life raft at sea. I don't think it works that way. And why even bother trying to find your position when you have no means of propulsion in the water. He had way bigger problems to worry about, like water.

In this day and age I find it very hard to believe that he would have no sort of communication. How about a two-way radio? Jesus, they go for about $20 these days and are a lot better for signaling a passing ship than a flare. Most ships these days won't even have anyone looking out at the sea. Why would they?

And then he sets his own craft on fire which might happen if you start a fire in a plastic container in the middle of your rubber raft. He doesn't deserve to survive. What a complete waste of what could have been a great movie. A great movie would have been the survival tale of a really experienced and highly resourceful seaman, not like this bungling fool. The end.

I'm going to call it "The Artist Effect". In 2011, director Michel Mazanavicius brought a black and white silent film called The Artist to the Cannes Film Festival. The film dazzled the French crowd, but bringing a silent film into the trend-setting North American market was anything but a safe bet. Released domestically in January of 2012, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture proving that American audiences were willing to accept films with limited speaking roles. As a result of the critical success of The Artist, we have seen some daring and spectacular projects of scripts with limited dialogue. Ang Lee's Life of Pi was basically a boy on a boat talking to a tiger with little verbal sparring after their ship capsizes. And this week, Alfonso Cuaron opened Gravity to $55 plus million despite the film having but two characters drifting alone in space with limited conversational communication. Both films proved to be both a critical and commercial success and The Artist Effect may have paved their way to box office glory. The Artist Effect is next to be realized in J.C. Chandor's All is Lost. Starring Robert Redford (and ONLY Robert Redford), All is Lost showcases the story of a sailor who after a freak collision with a floating shipping container must use his resources to stay afloat and alive against both the odds and the elements that harshly attack survival. With the ship taking on water, Redford's character must use his resourcefulness as a seasoned boatman to counter the inevitability of his sinking vessel. With limited tools and a survival kit that can provide for a single person a handful of days on the ocean, we watch engrossingly as the elements take their toll both physically and mentally on the deteriorating sailor. With food dwindling, fresh water unavailable and a life raft being torn apart with each impending storm, all is but lost for the seaman and a message in a jar seeking forgiveness tossed to the sea might be the only lasting connection to the loved ones left behind. J.C. Chandor showed that he could handle the complexities of multiple characters in a complex financial market with 2011's Margin Call. With All is Lost, Chandor strips away subplots, multiple character developments and compounded locations for a simpler story that rides the back of the credible Redford who commands the screen in a dazzling performance that will be considered one of his best. The script, also penned by Chandor, stays away from many of the usual clichés and easy jump scares or moments of awe that would be easily picked from the Stereotype Tree by a less confident director. The story is not fed to its audience with narration or a man talking to himself to education the audience on his thought process. Instead, All is Lost trusts that the audience will be able to understand the decisions and actions of the protagonist and in this venture the film succeeds admirably. Robert Redford shines as the sole actor on the call sheet and only once before Academy nominated actor (for 1973's The Sting), might finally get his due with his riveting portrayal of a man that slowly loses hope in his survival. Simple and without plot edges, All is Lost was worth the excursion.

A depressing and frustrating tale of a lonely sailor, who struggles to survive at open sea in his damaged yacht. Surprisingly, the film discusses the limit and length of "giving-up" of a rather resourceful man who by- and-by accepts that he won't make it against the odds.

Beautifully filmed, cleverly sound-mixed... and Robert Redford is phenomenally "our man", literally. The director, J. C. Chandor, who although didn't achieve quite the mark of his debut feature ( Margin Call ) but nevertheless, made something which has such a unique, subtle appearance that no matter how mundane the flow is (with almost the absolute absence of dialogues), a viewer would be vying for our man till the very end.

Not for all viewers, but the ones with the will to watch something conventional "revisited" will appreciate it more.

As an experienced international offshore yachtsman for 30 years I was really looking forward to this movie - and I was sadly disappointed.

The opening scenes we are presented with the prospect of a 40' shipping container yacht striking a 40' yacht to such a degree that it creates a half metre hole in the yacht...but does not wake the skipper!!. To believe this you would have to accept that Redfords character was in fact in a coma, or without a pulse! This was immediately surpassed by Redford, when he awoke not immediately running the bilge pumps when the water is only just lapping the floor boards - no he waits until its waist deep and the has to use a hand pump, (with a hand made handle) as the batteries are now submerged. You only have to wait a little longer to witness further stupidity - he abandons ship whilst its still salvageable, and then without taking all the provisions that one must have stowed for such a big passage - and then of course runs out of food in the life raft!

The final act of lighting a fire in the life raft and burning the entire craft had me thinking this was perhaps a remake of Dumb and Dumber.

Just the fact we are expected to accept that such an obviously inept solo yachtsman, devoid of any seamanship, navigation or common sense, sailing a completely ill-equipped yacht could make it half way around the world, presumably from the USA to Indonesia before he strikes trouble is in itself implausible.

This movies final stages had me hoping the Redford character would not survive, thus proving Darwins theory and providing some hope for the worlds gene pool.