In the Heart of the Sea [Blu-ray]

Director: Ron Howard Ron Howard

Overview

Ron Howard helms this adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick's historical novel about the harrowing high-seas encounter that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In the winter of 1820, the crew of the New England whaling ship the Essex struggle to survive after an attack by a rogue sperm whale leaves them stranded at sea for 90 days. Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson co-star.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/08/2016
UPC:	0883929425921
Original Release:	2015
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Warner Home Video
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:02:00
Sales rank:	17,760

Special Features

Ron Howard Captain's Log - Follow the Director's Filmmaking Voyage Via Executive Production Photos and His Personal Twitter Feed; Chris Hemsworth and Benjamin Walker Dive into Their Characters' Combative Rivalry; Uncover the True Stories of Courage and Obession that Inspired the Classic Novel Moby Dick; Deleted and Extended Scenes

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Chris Hemsworth	Owen Chase
Benjamin Walker	Captain George Pollard
Cillian Murphy	Zweiter Maat Matthew Joy
Ben Whishaw	Schriftsteller Herman Melville
Tom Holland	Tom Nickerson
Brendan Gleeson	Tom Nickerson (mit 30 Jahren)
Jordi Mollà	Captain der Archimedes
Charlotte Riley	Peggy Chase
Frank Dillane	Henry Coffin
Paul Anderson	Caleb Chappel,Actor
Michelle Fairley	Mrs. Nickerson
Joseph Mawle	Benjamin Lawrence
Donald Sumpter	Paul Mason
Jamie Sives	Cole
Andrew Crayford	Actor
Claudia Newman	Actor
Hayley Joanne Bacon	Actor
Edward Ashley	Barzillai Ray
Daniel Westwood	Actor
Morgan Chetcuti	Sheppard
Osy Ikhile	Richard Peterson
Jill Buchanan	Actor
Sam Keeley	Ramsdell
Nicholas Jones	Pollard Senior
Richard Bremmer	Benjamin Fuller
Victor Esteban Sole	Harpooner
Nordin Aoures	First Mate
Santi Lopez	Second Mate
Cristhian Esquivel	Quichua Indian Trader
Harry Jardine	Rescue Ship Lookout
Jamie Michie	Rescue Ship Captain
Andy Wareham	John Sanborn
Frans Huber	Nye (Sailor)
Mark Southworth	Francis Easton
Christopher Keegan	Shareholder
Stephanie Jacob	Tally Woman
Kierron Quest	Thomas
Luca Tosi	Wright
Nicholas Tabone	Weeks
Martin Wilde	Benjamin Gardner
Michael Cronin	Quaker Prayer Leader
Christian Wolf-La'Moy	Quaker Nantucket bank
Matthew John Morley	Chandler
Victor Solé	Harpooner
Gary Beadle	William Bond
Roque Baños	Composer
Roque Banos	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Morgan

Nathaniel Philbrick

Rick Jaffa

Amanda Silver

Charles Leavitt

Ron Howard	Director,Producer
Joe Roth	Producer
William Ward	Producer,Producer
Paula Weinstein	Producer
Brian Grazer	Producer
Peter Morgan	Screenwriter
Bruce Berman	Executive Producer,Producer
David Bergstein	Executive Producer,Producer
Erica Huggins	Executive Producer,Producer
Palak Patel	Executive Producer,Producer
Sarah Bradshaw	Executive Producer,Producer
Markus Stemler	Sound/Sound Designer
Nina Gold	Casting
Andreas Wentz	Production Manager
Juan Trujillo	Production Manager
Daniel F. Malone	Stunts
Eunice Huthart	Stunts
Mark Holt	Special Effects Supervisor
Nathaniel Philbrick	Screenwriter
Rick Jaffa	Screenwriter
Amanda Silver	Screenwriter
Steven Mnuchin	Executive Producer,Producer
Eva Abramycheva	Special Effects
George Atkins	Sound Effects
Tony Crowe	Sound Effects
Mark DeSimone	Sound Effects
Charles Leavitt	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

In 1850 Nantucket, young novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) arrives at a dockside boardinghouse late one night, when all of the boarders have gone to bed and only the proprietress (Michelle Fairley) and her husband Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) are still awake. The husband is spending the wee hours as he usually does: drinking himself into a cloud of whiskey and gently jiggering upright the masts of the model ships in the many bottles around him. Melville has come to hear his story, which he thinks would be beneficial for the research he's doing for a novel: a whaling saga, set on a ship, about how the search for the unattainable can ruin a man's life. He's willing to pay for an interview, but money alone won't pry open this man's box of memories. He's a survivor of the wreck of the Essex, a legendary whaling ship that met its match under shady circumstances, even though its first mate, Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), was one of the finest sailors who ever lived. He hedges. Melville persists. And so, with some encouragement from his wife (and a fresh bottle), he spills his unforgettable tale. In the Heart of the Sea, based on Nathaniel Philbrick's nonfiction novel about the sea voyage that inspired Moby Dick, boasts an impressive cast of cult-favorite actors from former and current British territories -- Chris Hemsworth, Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, Frank Dilane -- who, with their various accents, form a believable ensemble hailing from what was, after all, New England. Studio head Jack L. Warner once famously complained, after his company produced a string of historical films that were box-office duds, "Don't make me any more movies where people write with feathers." That stuffy formality is the downfall of the many period dramas so eager to get the details right that the thrust of the story is forgotten, but In the Heart of the Sea sidesteps that danger mostly through the combined skill of its cast. Only the ship's highborn captain (played by Benjamin Walker) behaves like a stuffed shirt, and rightly so: He is the only character who is conscious of performing a destiny, as if he's already posing for the ancestral portrait that will someday grace his well-to-do family's estate. Everyone else is just a working stiff trying to get through the day with the tools he has. For Chase, it's an arsenal of harpoons to cut down the whales, and for Melville, it's a frantically scribbling pen, the only thing he has to ward off the ego-squelching presence of literary contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne. This world is rich with artifacts, from crystal wine cruets to whale-oil lamps to a key-cranked marine chronometer, but their matter-of-fact handling by the actors keeps the focus on the story. Regrettably, the one directorial decision that disturbs the movie's immersive, you-are-there quality is the unwanted and interrupting presence of extreme close-ups that look as if they're from security cameras affixed to strange locations -- looking straight down the rail of the ship, for example, or in a Nantucket gutter so we get a worm's eye view of a corn cob being slobbered on by a stray dog. Is this an attempt to graft the visual language of reality TV and surveillance footage onto a historical epic, in order to convince us of its authenticity? If so, it doesn't work, and it somewhat undermines the topsy-turvy sensation of the shots that give us a sense of the hazards of whaling, getting up close and personal with a behemoth mammal in the frothing surf. (There's also a disorienting casting choice: Chris Hemsworth bears a strong resemblance to Brendan Gleeson, which might make audiences think that the story is told from Chase's perspective, not that of the younger shipmate Nickerson later turns out to be.) But these are small quibbles considering that In the Heart of the Sea is a thrilling survival saga that will get your blood pumping. Director Ron Howard has created a maritime redux of his other explorers' epic, Apollo 13; both of the films are about men at the mercy of technologies that help them traverse dangerous places (outer space, the open sea) but also make them more vulnerable, and both focus on the deep reserves of courage those men discover while trying to survive a no-man's-land. Indeed, this movie features two different journeys into a heart of darkness running in parallel: one aboard the Essex, and the other between Melville and Nickerson as they slowly reveal their demons to each other over the course of that long, witching-hour conversation. In the Heart of the Sea is more than just a diverting footnote to the legacy of Moby Dick -- it's an illuminating look at the sacrifices of brave men in ages past, a seafaring adventure, a survival yarn, and a meditation on courageous journeys both public and private.