Moby Dick
Moby Dick
TV-PG | 08 May 2011 (USA)
SEASON & EPISODES
  • 1
  • Reviews
    Cebalord

    Very best movie i ever watch

    ... View More
    Bereamic

    Awesome Movie

    ... View More
    Janae Milner

    Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

    ... View More
    Zlatica

    One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

    ... View More
    ma-cortes

    Fine television rendition about Herman Neville novel with enjoyable interpretations from all-star-cast . In this extremely loose adaptation of Melville's classic novel, Ahab is revealed initially not as a bitter and revengeful madman . This oceans saga features the sole survivor of a lost whaling ship who relates the tale of a white whale and the captain Ahab's obsession with desires for vendetta upon the greatest animal . It starts in New Bedford , Massachussets, where arrives a novice named Ishmael (Charlie Cox) who signs aboard the whaling ship Pequod and befriends a Polynesian native , harpooner Queequeg (Raoul Trujillo). He meets Elijah (Billy Boyd) , Stubb (Eddie Marsan) , Starbuck (Ethan Hawke) and captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) who has a self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale , Moby Dick . Ahab consecrates his life to hunt it full of hating and vengeance . Soon enough Ishmael aware about the great white whale who claimed the captain's leg and Ahab's determination to seek avenge on the beast that crippled and scarred him , no matter what the cost to himself , his crew or ship .Yet another take on of Melville's classic battle of wills story . The picture is a fine television adaptation of the famous novel well scripted/adapted and ably realized . Moby Dick is an attractive tale of life on the high seas, and in particular on board a whale schooner named 'Pequod' . This impressive adaptation based on Herman Melville's 1851 classic novel is vividly brought to screen . The interactions between Ahab, Michigan & Stubb is reminiscent of captain Vere, Billy Budd & Master-at-arms John Claggart, the main characters of Billy Budd, another novel written by Moby-Dick's author, Herman Melville , and it results to be one of the most thrilling and moving see sagas ever written . Suspense and tension of the ocean is completely captured , including enduring images as the storm with the 'fire of Saint Telmo' . Climatic final battle is an overwhelming piece of cinema as you are likely to watch . Nigel Williams wrote a screenplay that was partially faith to the novel and filmmaker Mike Binder stamping this movie with epic images and thought-provoking dialogs . Enjoyable recounting , including quite a few moments that click make this top-of-the-range movie more than watchable . The FX experts created a great whale made by means of ordinary computer generator . Top-notch main and secondary cast realize extraordinary performances . William Hurt is nice as well as Ethan Hawke and Charlie Cox . Phenomenal support cast as Eddie Marsan as Stubb , Gillian Anderson as Elizabeth , Billy Boyd as Elijah , Raoul Trujillo as Queequeg and Stephen McHattie as Rachel Captain . Cameraman Richard Greatrex's appropriate color cinematography splendidly conveys the bleaker qualities of the chase . Exciting and thrilling musical score by Richard Mitchell. The motion picture was professionally directed by Mike Binder , though with no originality . He's a nice director working usually for television as ¨Moby Dick¨, ¨Sea wolf¨ ,¨Lorna Doone¨ and occasionally for cinema as ¨A good woman¨, ¨To kill a king¨ and o ¨Butterfly on a wheel¨ his best movie. Other renditions about this famous novel are the followings : 1930 rendition by Lloyd Bacon with John Barrymore, this is the first production of "Moby Dick" to have a leading female character , Joan Blondell . Moby Dick (1959) by John Huston , an over-the-top rendition of Herman Melville's high seas saga with a sensational Gregory Peck as unforgettable captain Ahab . It's remade in 1998 TV series by Franc Roddan with Patrick Stewart ,Henry Thomas , Bill Hunter and Gregory Peck who takes on the character of Jonah-and-the-whale sermonizing Father Mapple who in classic adaptation was vividly played by Orson Welles . Furthermore , recent lousy rendition full of computer generator FX starred by Barry Bostwick and Renee O'Connor .

    ... View More
    ppachura

    OK, I saw this on cable and only recorded the 2nd half. Considering the other reviewers' bashing of the 1st half, I should be thankful. I really liked Hurt's performance. I had a feeling that Ahab was vulnerable. Maybe that is not historically accurate, because ship's captains are often portrayed as being in absolute control. However, if you are leading your crew to certain doom and neglecting the easy money, then you are likely to have an insurrection. The CGI was fine, no complaints. Its just hard to capture the enormity of the whale, and how terrifying it must be in a small boat with an unpredictable giant toying with you. Its a giant you can only catch a glimpse of in real life, so how do you portray that on a screen ? I just with the there had been a slower ending. After that powerful conclusion, it should have drawn out the scene of Ishmael floating in a vast empty sea to let the audience digest the powerful and terrible tragedy that has just occurred. The sad singing at the end could have really set the tone, but instead they just rolled the credits. If only I could re-edit this film, this could be the one that is required viewing for all English students after reading the book.

    ... View More
    kickaxerrr

    "Moby Dick" is my favorite novel. I have read it many times. William Hurt and Ethan Hawke are two of my favorite actors. So I had high hopes for this movie version. My hopes were diminished slightly in the opening scene where Ishmael, the main character, saves Pip, the future cabin boy, from a beating on the way to Nantucket and brings him along. That scene never happened in the book. Pip doesn't show up until they are all on the ship, but I know that some liberties need to be taken in a translation from novel to movie, so I dismissed it. Then my hopes were completely dashed over the next 3 hours. In those 3 hours there were about 15 minutes worth of film that were actually taken from the book. It is as though the screenwriter read the back cover of the novel, where it says that it is the story of an obsessed captain chasing a white whale and wrote a completely new story based on nothing but that. One of the more obvious things is that, in the book, Ahab, the captain, doesn't even appear until days into the sea voyage when he finally emerges from his cabin. In the movie the first half hour or more involves him at home with his wife and son, neither of which are even in the book at all. Even the climactic ending has been changed a great deal. It would take up too much space to write about all the other things that are completely different from the novel. Basically this is not a film version of "Moby Dick" at all, it is an invention of the screenwriter, based on a similar idea.Forgetting all that, the movie itself, as a movie, is just not that good. The direction is OK and the performances are all relatively good, except for Hurt, who is, as another reviewer said "hammy" and "cheesy". He should have played a sandwich instead of Ahab. The special effects are sub par, considering what can be done nowadays. The whales shown often don't even make a splash when they dive under. They just disappear. The plot is thin with none of the characters really developed in any way, except perhaps for Starbuck the first mate, who is the only one in the movie who seems to even realize what is going on. Two earlier versions, the 1956 version with Gregory Peck and the 1998 version with Patrick Stewart, despite their own flaws were much better movies and more faithful adaptations of the novel than this one. So watch those, or even better read the book.

    ... View More
    jmcdnnll99

    It seems that each filmed version of Moby-Dick is compelled to be worse than the one before and that each embodier of the partially disembodied Ahab must make his predecessor seem better, not just in the distance of time but also in distanced performance. Who will underperform William Hurt I hope never to see. Each scriptwriter also must feel a need to demonstrate the superiority of Melville's original, both in his concept and execution. The most recent version appears somewhat like a Second City take on Moby-Dick Meets The Outsiders: all the tortured Jugendangst! Ethan Hawke does do a good C. Thomas Howell sendup, but Hawke should rather be doing a good performance of a first mate, one who is one step below the ship's master. Even the Pequod gets nonverisimilitude. A square-rigged whaler gets turned into a bark. If people cared enough to write, finance, film, and present what is generally regarded as a if not the preeminent work of American fiction, why was care and cash not more carefully scripted and directed? Even the cgi attempt at the whale of whales had the look of an audition submission for an early ScyFy project.

    ... View More