In The Impossible, a family goes on a beach holiday in Thailand where a tsunami strikes and separates the parents (Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor) from each other. Rescue operations after a massive natural disaster in a third word country are predictably chaotic. The story is about each of the parents finding their kids, losing them, finding them again and looking for the other parent. It is based on a true story.
If you enjoy watching human suffering, especially with children in peril (think Trauma:Life in the E.R.) and heartwarming reunifications, you may enjoy this movie. That’s really all there is here. It’s competently acted, but it’s just a standard kids-in-danger disaster movie. The tsunami scenes are very good, but I did not find them as compelling as Clint Eastwood’s in Hereafter.
Oddly, Naomi Watts has garnered Best Actress nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes for this picture. These seem more reflective of her fine body of work (Mulholland Dr., 21 Grams, Fair Game) than of her performance here, where she does a good job essentially playing a pinata.
I was very disappointed in The Impossible because director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez had combined for 2007’s The Orphanage, one of the best ghost movies I’ve ever seen. But, The Impossible is at its core disaster movie, and it fails to rise above its genre.