Wonderfully offbeat film!

Overrated

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This was an awful load of old rubbish. Most of the acting was painful to watch, the characters unbelievable and unsympathetic with the possible exception of the British Consul or whatever he was. Were we supposed to feel sympathy for Mrs Peabody and her awful droning on and on about her son's leg. He lost a leg, 300,000 people lost their lives!!! and she wanted a medevac arranged just for him !!! I kept watching until the end to see if the story ran true to what I would have expected from this calibre of programme, and the 6 year old British girl be miraculously found. OK, it didn't run true to form!. I would also hope that the person who played Ellen Webb now realises she has no future in acting. Shame on the BBC for being a party to this rubbish. And shame on me for watching it until the end.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the tsunami tragedy was re-enacted. The acting and the writing stand above the other craft.The execution is compelling thoroughly. It boggles my mind to find so many negative reviews on this site. This film in my opinion presents an honest and comprehensive account of the tsunami tragedy and its aftermath, it explores the causes, it attaches blame without luridness, it visits the foundation of the family as a institution in the midst of a life altering crisis, it is emotionally compelling, it is educational, it is thought provoking. This film made my everyday problems feel like a picnic at the park.I didn't know Tim Roth was that good.

A group of European scuba divers are out at sea off the coast of Thailand on Boxing Day 2004. They return to the shore to find destruction as far as they can see, an ocean full of bodies and no sign of the loved ones they left behind. Meanwhile, on the shore itself the survivors of the tidal wave flee for higher ground for fear of a second wave hitting. As the authorities struggle to return some sense of order or control, the survivors try to find their missing relatives whether they are dead or alive.I wasn't sure about whether to watch this or not because I found it difficult to imagine how a film could adequately capture the sheer sense of horror and the loss of so many hundreds of thousands of lives. And of course, having watched it, the film doesn't really ever manage to give the viewer a sense of how destructive and devastating the disaster was. Of course this is not really the fault of the film but it is generally just difficult to picture that many people dead and difficult to look at footage of missing villages and understand what happened. So this leaves the film to try and deliver it the best it can and fill the film with a handful of characters that can be followed from pre-disaster into the aftermath of the title.In doing this it was never going to be perfect but it does build a cross section of characters and also deal with the emotional impact of the disaster as well as the organisational nightmare that followed as well as the inevitable search for someone to blame or be angry at. The film doesn't manage to do all of these well and indeed some of the threads fall flat; Tim Roth's journalist as an example of one aspect that could have been scaled back a bit. The result of it trying to do a lot is that the film is a bit too long and does feel baggy at some points. The strongest thread is that of the couple played by Ejiofor and Okonedo. They convey the emotions of those who have lost relatives without knowing if they are dead or alive. This part is engaging because of their performances – both of which are wonderful and painfully convincing. Their relationship is real before and after and it hurts to watch what they go through – they are the heart of the film and, although they are European, they embody the loss and pain. The Peabody's (McKee et al) and Machielsen's Tan do this as well but it is not as raw and emotional. The rest of the cast are left with the other material to work with and they all mostly do good work. For all his character's relative unimportance, Roth still does well and he does provide a glue to hold the bigger picture together. Bonneville and Collette provide the organisational side with teeth and meaningful performances.Although the plot wanders a bit in the second half, this film still has enough about it to engage and move. Occasionally baggy it is mostly interesting and holds the attention. The cast are mostly good but the emotional heart of the film is wonderfully delivered by two guttingly real performances from Ejiofor and Okonedo.

The problem with making a film about a well-known disaster is that the obvious line of dramatic development is precluded precisely because everyone knows it before the film starts. In 'Titanic', James Cameron spun a tale about the spirit of the age, which he bound up with the famous event at the heart of the film; but 'Tsumami: the Aftermath' tries no such tricks, and sells us a straightforward catalogue of human misery and suffering. It's all very earnest, and unclear what the point is supposed to be. Countless survivors (with missing relatives) are shown responding with a mixture of dignity and disbelief in reality. This may be one response to tragedy, but it's not the only one, and in this film appears to be celebrated as the highest expression of the human condition: epitomised when one man stands up at a public meeting and is applauded for his heartfelt but impossible demand that his (dead) child is returned to him. Liekwise, the film stresses a view that those on the scene in a non-personal capacity needed to emotionally empathise with the feelings of the suffering, whereas one could argue that, when it comes to the rationing of limited resources, one actually needs officials who can be completely dispassionate, and who can turn down the heart-rending (and conventionally justified) demands of those who cry loudest to meet instead the needs of those with even greater need. Finally, there is a political sub-plot, but this is presented more as a means to the redemption of a cynical journalist (who, as you might have guessed, learns to care) than as an end in itself.The review may sound pretty cynical in itself, and I don't want to belittle the appalling human suffering of the real life tragedy in any way. But this film's obsession with dignified emoting puts a very strange spin on the human condition.