This movie had a lot going for it in terms of my tastes: thrilling survival movie? Stranded in the ocean with nothing but the clothes on their backs? Their families and the coast guard frantically trying to save their loved ones. It was the emotional setup that I look for in a movie, and it was really good, but it definitely wasn’t the best thing ever. 

I thought all the actors did amazingly in their roles as the four best friends. Zachary Levi is the main focus of this film, (helloooo Flynn Rider), since his character, Nick Schuyler, is the one who wrote the book about his experience out at sea. However, you see all the guys pretty equally throughout the movie. Marquis (Quentin Plair) seemed to be more of the comedian of the group with Corey (Terrence Terrell) following closely behind. Since Will (Marshall Cook) isn’t really part of their friend group except for being best friends with Nick, you see more of his personality come out once the actual boat capsizes. 

With the story as a whole, you get a little bit of background before they actually go out into the Gulf. It’s basically just enough to meet their families, establish a connection, and then send them off to fish. A majority of the two-hour runtime is them stranded out in the freezing cold waters. Also, in the blurb they mention sharks. This is NOT a shark movie. You see them once in the whole movie and they don’t do anything, just a heads up for those shark-movie lovers here. You also get one epilogue moment where it shows six months after the accident and what that aftermath looks like (no spoilers here, but I will say them below). 

The “thriller” part of this movie was there because I honestly just put this on in the background while I did chores and found myself slack-jawed watching as they went through these horrible things. I also felt my heart racing many times wondering what was going to happen. So, that definitely bumped the film up for me because this movie was definitely something I didn’t want to take my eyes away from because the stakes were so high. 

Spoilers ahead.

This was really freaking sad because the only one who lives is Nick (and I mean just barely lives). He watches all of his friends die of hypothermia, and if they would have had jackets or just something more than what they had, they may have lived. It just makes me so sad for Nick and the friends he lost (as well as all of their families). Two things I want to say, though (and this is no reflection on the actual men who died and the one who lived; I didn’t know them at all, this is purely observational from the film): one, I never would’ve known this was supposed to be a faith-based film had I not read that on a review site; two? I couldn’t help but think these poor men made some pretty bad decisions before and after their boat capsized. Would I have made different decisions? Who knows because I wasn’t in that situation. But watching the movie adaptation made me hope that I wouldn’t have revved the engine to get the anchor unstuck. I think the thing that hurts the most about it is that literally, so much could have been prevented had their boat not flipped. It was just so heartbreaking to watch everyone but Nick go. I really thought at least one other person would survive, but it just didn’t work out that way. I hope their families never watched this movie because I can’t imagine how much it would hurt to not only think about what happened to their men, but to see it played out on screen. I hope they’ve been able to heal. Including Nick.

Overall, it’s devastating that this is based on a true story (and probably more similar to what happened than other movies “based” on true stories since they followed Schuyler’s book). It was thrilling, something I couldn’t take my eyes off, and the emotions were SO high. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever watched because, like some other people have said, this movie felt like it was trying to be something and just didn’t hit the mark (maybe that was the faith-based issue I mentioned in the spoilers?). Regardless, I still really enjoyed this, but I’m not sure it’s something that I would ever rewatch or remember later.

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