Too many fans seem to be blown away

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

At school I always seem to be reading excerpts of Thor Heyerdahl's book of the Kon Tiki expedition in English lessons. Then in History the name would crop up again as we learned about human migration.Kon-Tiki is a Norwegian language dramatised account of this 1947 voyage as Thor in order to proof his madcap theory that people from South America migrated to the Pacific Islands by using the oceans as some kind of superhighway. DNA tests seem to confirm that the Polynesians came from Asia.Thor part of a team of six crew members built a balsa wood raft and used ancient navigation techniques. In their 101 day voyage, they fought off sharks, whales, bad weather, boredom and some disputes within the crew as to whether they were doing the right thing.The film has some wonderful photography but it really is hard to make an exciting film of what really is six guys in a boat, hence why I found the text all those years ago rather flat.Still as the crew continue with their voyage and their facial hairs grow, the bodies tan, all these Scandinavian men start to look similar.

I was intrigued by the story of Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition which took place in an era without GPS, mobile phones etc. This is sooo normal for us now, even though I myself have lived 3/4 of my life without this technology as well.I very much liked the look of this movie, almost reminded me of the glorious technicolor movies of the '40s-'50s in which it is actually situated. You can feel the blistering sun out at see and sense the tropical heat in Fatu Hivu, the use of colour and light is outstanding, in the Pacific as well in the scenes shot in Norway. Loved it.I understand Thor Heyerdahl wasn't the most sympathetic bloke around, but even in a movie about him there could have been made more effort in trying to get the audience to understand his motives. We see a brief synopsis of his life in Fatu Hivu, but the movie switches to it straight from his Scandinavian childhood without much explanation. Why did he become a zoologist and geographer in the first place? Unless I missed this, I still don't know why. It kind of got in the way of me understanding his sudden and uncontrollable drive to prove the theory of Tiki.Heyerdahl obviously was a very driven, ambitious and intelligent man, stubborn and a bit of a dictator as well. Very few successful men/explorers would have survived without these characteristics, so that's fine. In the movie, they tried to show another side of him, more vulnerable, privately doubting his decisions, sometimes even being afraid (and he only shows that in private, never to other people). When the movie premiered, actor Pal Hagen was the same age as Hayerdahl when he made the voyage. When you consider this, a young man, only 33, undertaking this epic trip, that must have been a daunting command. Hagen did a great job in portraying Heyerdahl in this stage of his life. I also liked actor Gustaf Skarsgard as Bengt and Tobias Santelman as Knut.There are a lot of scenes leading up to the actual raft trip, and some flash-back scenes as well (with one about Thor and an injured Liv trying to get help by alarming a sailing boat passing Fatu Hivu: what was that for and what did it mean for the movie... I still can't figure it out). The actual trip is more about the first 20 days when they seem to be drifting in the wrong direction; as soon as they catch the right current, next we know they are crashing into Raroia. That's ±75 days gone in a few minutes.There are some other irregularities. The way the Kon-Tiki crew is choosing, for instance. Apart from one childhood friend, and a refrigerator salesman, there is no explanation for any of the other crew members other than that they are Scandinavian and that they have some sort of skill that Thor can use. I read that each of these men were in fact very, very skilled technicians, smart and experienced. In the movie however, they come across as amateurs, a bunch of randomly generated men, not very stress resistant. That clearly was so not the case, I was sorry that the director/producers thought it would be more interesting to create some tension between these men whereas in reality they were a well oiled team, disciplined and focused. I mean, at the end of the movie they show that Herman went to become a UN international representative for Fishing! And in the movie he was just a scared, shiftless refrigerator salesman who doubts Thor all the time and is constantly thinking they will all die at sea.And the parrot/shark killing scene was indeed OTT, as well as the fake beards at the end (that was even ridiculous).I liked the movie, did not love it. But it has made me interested in the figure of Heyerdahl and the many, many expeditions he did after Kon-Tiki. Meanwhile, DNA investigation has proved that Polynesians do descend from South Americans, if in percentage much less than from Asians.An entertaining movie. I can understand its nomination for the Oscars, the look and feel of it are great, but I can equally understand why it didn't win. I'm going to try and find Heyerdahls own documentary, which DID win an Oscar in 1951.I was sorry to not have been able to watch it in Norwegian, which I think would have made the dialogues between the actors more wooden than it now was. For commercial purposes, and English version was made.

Kon-Tiki proves that there's still a place in the world for explorers. For adventurers, brave men and women that are willing to push farther than anyone before them. It's a tale of assumptions proved to be correct, of mad undertakings, lost causes, heroic deeds and the burning will to test the limits of human capability.Kon-Tiki tells the tale of Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen), a real life "experimental archaeologist", who wanted to prove that the Polynesian islands could have been populated over the Pacific Ocean instead of the original settlers coming from Asia. And to prove this he decides to cross the Pacific himself, using ancient methods. The story is instantly interesting and made all the better because it's based on real events and real people.The actors are also up to the task, with Hagen being unshakably convincing as the leading dreamer and resident mad genius. I also really like the production values. Pacific has rarely looked better than here, the ship itself feels authentic and the Polynesian islands are beautiful to behold. I also like that the story doesn't shy away from the more somber events, like the strain this attempt put on Heyerdahl's marriage.All in all Kon-Tiki is well worth a watch for all that love adventures, biographies and sea voyages. It's a beautiful film, both visually and thematically.

Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdal comes up with the idea that South Americans could travel from the east to Polynesia as he visits the area. Nobody believes that pre-Columbian civilizations had the ships to travel those great distances. With support and a ragtag team, he builds a balsa wood raft in 1947 and set off on a 101 day adventure.It has a bit of drama and a good sense of wonder in it. There is also a sense of impending danger. The ocean filming is well done. I'm not sure how much CGI if any was used. The marine life look very realistic. The sharks are great. The actors are not known to me but they do a good job. The movie has a good sense of doom despite the fact that everybody knows they made it in the end.