The Impossible Review

Words By

• Mad Dog Bradley

Barcelona-born director JA (The Orphanage) Bayona’s Spanish-produced, English-language account of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami has been nominated for awards and attracted controversy (the actual family involved was Spanish, yet the onscreen characters seem cautiously nationality-free), but perhaps the biggest problem is its labelling as a ‘Disaster Movie’, as this is in fact intended as a study of the power - and the stubbornness - of the human spirit.

Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons, Lucas, Thomas and Simon (Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast), travel to beautiful coastal Thailand for Christmas and, after a calm but you-know-what’s-coming build-up, the family are relaxing at the pool when the tidal wave hits, in a sequence that uses models, old-fashioned trick photography and a water tank instead of tedious CGI - and is all the more terrifying because of it. The quintet’s then split up, with the battered Maria cared for by Lucas, Henry alone and the younger sons apparently swept away, as Bayona stages scenes that often prove very moving, with bewildered and traumatised survivors (many bit-players were actually there) struggling to comprehend one of the most destructive natural catastrophes in history.

If you can get past the problematic aspects here (and some odd moments, as when Watts’ Maria, surrounded by devastation, stops to adjust her top so that her eldest son doesn’t see her breast), then this is certainly worth persevering with, even if it’s not quite what you’d call ‘entertaining’. But, then again, think of what it could have been like if, say, Michael bloody Bay had directed it.