Movie review: 'The Impossible' a powerful recreation of family's tsunami ordeal
One moment it’s paradise on Earth for comfortable British couple Maria and Henry Bennett (Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor ) and their three young sons at a Thailand resort, and the next it’s a tumbling, watery hell as the Indian Ocean rises up without warning to crush everything in its relentless path.
So begins the aptly titled “The Impossible,” directed by J.A. Bayona from a script by Sergio G. Sanchez (collaborators on the acclaimed “The Orphanage”) and based on the true story of one family’s incredible ordeal in the wake of the Dec. 26, 2004 South Asian tsunami that claimed the lives of more than 230,000 people in 14 countries.
In the first wave of the terrible deluge, Maria and her 13-year-old son Lucas (Tom Holland) are separated from Henry and the two younger boys, swept inland in a rapidly surging flood of murky sea water filled with debris that inflicts cuts large and small all over their bodies, bone-breaking stationary obstacles, falling trees and floating automobiles as they fight to keep their heads above water and hang on to one another.
Maria is seriously hurt, yet her determination to reach some safe place with Lucas and a small boy they rescue along the way keeps her going, even as she suffers excruciating pain and visibly begins to weaken from infection. At the same time the once troublesome and ill-tempered Lucas quickly transforms himself into his mother’s brave protector on their harrowing journey through a damaged third world full of tens of thousands of strangers in distress, most of whom don’t speak English.
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