'Impossible' hits with wave of emotions - Boston Herald

"The ImpossIble"
Rated PG-13. At AMC Loews Boston Common and Kendall Square Cinema.
Grade: A

The most harrowing tale of humans vs. the ele­ments since Kevin Macdonald's 2003 non-fiction film "Touching the Void," "The Impossible" is the ultimate heart-wrenching roller-coaster ride made all the more powerful by a superb cast. It's the ­"Extreme Swiss Family Robinson."

"The Impossible" recounts the story of a Spanish family, depicted as British in the film, on vacation at the beach in Thailand when the deadly South Asian tsunami struck the coast in 2004.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona and screen­writer Sergio G. Sanchez of the 2007 global hit "The ­Orphanage" reunite for their first English-­language effort and the results are even more nerve-­shattering. Based on a story by real-life survivor Maria Belon, played by Naomi Watts, the film is disarmingly simple. A young, well-off family — ­mother Maria (Watts), father Henry (Ewan ­McGregor) and sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and ­Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) — are caught like many other men, women and children out in the open when the first killer wave strikes and are swept away by the ­waters, as fragile as the ­paper sky lanterns the family released the night before.

When the first wave subsides, Maria and ­Lucas, both injured — she very badly — reach one another. Henry, Thomas and Simon are, however, nowhere to be found and presumed dead, and other dead bodies litter the ravaged landscape. Bayona reportedly used a combination of water tanks and CGI to depict the tsunami waves. The terrifying results speak for themselves and are as realistic as anything I've seen. Almost as frightening as the waves are the sounds we hear as the water surges forward, sweeping almost everything in its path before it: screeching steel, glass shattering, trees splintering, helpless, screaming people being tossed by the water and battered by flying debris.

"The Impossible" is a drama about the limits of human endurance. ­Maria persuades a reluctant ­Lucas to rescue a trapped child, even at the risk of their own lives: a moral lesson with a deferred payoff. Maria, a physician, tends to Lucas and to her own dire injuries. A labyrinthine hospital facility and its workers are completely overrun by casualties and desperate survivors searching for loved ones.

Fans of "The Orphanage" know that Bayona is a terrific storyteller and visual stylist. Who knew he could get these kind of performances? Watts is an instant contender for the Best Actress Academy Award, if not Mother­ of the Year, as Maria, a real-life Madonna whose love and compassion rise above the pain and suffering, even her own. McGregor is just as good in the slightly less powerful role of the distraught, devoted father. As Lucas, young Holland is a revelation. Geraldine Chaplin, who memorably played a psychic in "The Orphanage," returns in a small turn. Some have complained about changing­ the family's nationality. Are these critics complaining about that gigantic bore "Les Miserables" because it has Brits, Aussies­ and Americans playing all those bleating French people?

("The Impossible" con­tains gruesome images, brief nudity, extreme ­anguish and suffering.)