I've always felt a certain affinity for the extras in disaster movies. While the dashing hero uses his wit, bravery and athleticism to barely avoid the pitfalls of some catastrophe, there are seemingly hundreds of extras behind him literally dropping like flies. I've often wondered with great unease whether it is even remotely likely that I would be the hero in the midst of trauma, or just "Ann" falling down in the background.
The Impossible didn't make me feel any better. It is a true story about a seemingly average family who somehow got lucky and defied all the odds by escaping the Phuket tsunami as an intact, if worse for the wear, family. Whenever I began to feel moved by their plight, I only had to remember that others had it so much worse than they did. And when I wanted to feel happy for the many miracles that led them to find each other, I couldn't because of all the sad extras who represented real families who were not as lucky. Instead of feeling uplifted by their true tale, I felt despondent about the long odds that any of us face in the wake of disaster.
The acting was solid and the film was well shot, but this is not a film I could see myself recommending to anyone.
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