Sam Claflin (left) and Shailene Woodley in “Adrift”
No need for spoilers. The true story of survival behind Baltasar Kormakur’s lost-at-sea screen adventure, “Adrift,” has been inspiring the readers of “Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea,” the best-selling book on which the movie is based, since its release in 2003.
The film dramatizes 24-year-old Tami Oldham’s (Shailene Woodley, in a sink-or-swim thespic dilemma) first-person account of her 41-day ordeal after she and her 33-year-old fiancé Richard Sharpe (Sam Claflin) agree to go on a 6,564-kilometer journey to deliver a yacht from Tahiti in French Polynesia to San Diego, California.
Instead, the enthusiastic lovebirds sail directly into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history! But, in the disquieting calm after the storm, Tami quickly realizes there’s little hope for rescue.
The production benefits from Shailene’s vivacious effervescence and committed portrayal, but it is weighed down by Kormakur’s inability to proficiently vivify the life-and-death stakes that characterize the luckless survivors’ struggle.
As a result, the film has a hard time sustaining viewers’ interest—and keeping the film’s viewability afloat.