In the Heart of the Sea

Add Ron Howard's scaly sea adventure to this season's unusually large pile of cinematic chum. Chris Hemsworth stars, with little credibility, as a Nantucket-born sailor whose encounters with a monstrous white whale helped inspire Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Benjamin Walker plays the pampered and incompetent ship captain, offspring of a wealthy whaling family and Hemsworth's ostensible adversary, but we never get a feel for their relationship. Adapting Nathaniel Philbrick's 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, screenwriter Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond) frames the central story of the vessel's voyage and shipwreck as flashbacks told to Melville (Ben Whishaw) by the last survivor (Brendan Gleeson). It's a tired device that dilutes and distracts from the little drama that Howard musters, and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Most pointedly: how do you go from fresh-faced teen to Brendan Gleeson in less than three decades? D.B.