Finally we can start talking about something other than "the force" and how a guy in New York had his name legally changed to Darth Vader. "In the Heart of the Sea" is opening this weekend, and it's an adventure story on a whole other level, involving a killer whale instead of aliens. Set in 1820 and starring such notables as Ben Whishaw in the role of Herman Melville and Brendan Gleeson as his interviewee, Tom Nickerson, this is being promoted as the inspiration behind Melville's masterpiece "Moby Dick."
In the film, Nickerson was a 14-year-old lad (Tom Holland) when he joined a whaling expedition that went awry. When he returned a year later, he was a broken young man who had been through hell. Decades later, Melville gets Nickerson's story and turns it into one of the best loved page-turners of all time.
Directed by Ron Howard, who brings his brand of "go get 'em" positivity to every film ("A Beautiful Mind" and "Apollo 13," for starters), "In the Heart of the Sea" is high on optimism but somewhat low on the tense, gripping battle between man and sea mammal. That's understandable; whaling is an issue fraught with politics, and this being a story from two centuries ago probably doesn't change that fact. Howard treads carefully as he refrains from making the whalers seem like heroes or even warriors.