Except for the voice over prologue spoken by Robert Redford, which we will later discover is his message in a bottle, here are the infamous three words.
"Fuck."
You don't get that until about two-thirds of the way in. And, then, in short order....
"Help."
"Here."
That's it.
What you do get in this J.C. Chandor-directed film is a lot of tense action. And a cast of characters. Well, wait, a cast of character. Singular.
As "All is Lost" opens, Robert Redford is on his sailing yacht somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Nice vessel, but why you wouldn't be content to just ride that around Marina Del Rey is beyond me. Before you can say "mayday," some garbage floating around the sea rams Redford's yacht and there's a hole in his boat. He does his best to patch this up but you know this is going to be temporary because, after all, you already know the title of the movie.
Redford, clearly looking his age after way too many Sunday afternoons out on a hot tennis court, is put through his paces here as his boat slowly falls apart. His laptop is all wet. His short wave barely works and the only voice he can get apparently answers the phone at a Chinese restaurant. Meanwhile, he's running out of canned food, water, and clean t-shirts. When the mast rigging malfunctions, the 70-plus Redford shimmies up a 75 foot pole. You gotta be impressed with his work here. At the same time, he probably had a more grueling time making "The Way We Were" with that yenta Streisand.
Our man (and that's how he is billed in the one-line credits at the end) is faced with one peril after another. He uses this bizarre contraption to determine via the sun and stars just where he is. It looks like the same machinery my eye doctor uses to detect glaucoma. He figures that, if he can get himself into the Indian Ocean shipping lanes, he will be easily found.
Wrong. In a bizarre homage to "Captain Phillips," Redford runs up against the exact same cargo tanker we saw in that movie. Of course, nobody seems him, probably because that, too, has been commandeered by Somali pirates. Both these films will keep me off the high seas for the rest of my life.
Oh, wait, there's weather, too. Our man runs up against not one, not two, but three different monsoons. One storm spins the boat around and around with Redford stuck in the cabin. If he had been wearing tap shoes, he could have recreated Fred Astaire's famous revolving hotel suite dance from "Royal Wedding."
Eventually, we get a change of scenery when Redford must transfer everything over to a rubber life boat. Still, it doesn't get better for him or you. "All Is Lost" is great to look at, but ultimately exhausting. While totally compelling, it wears you out. Indeed, perhaps that was the intention of director and writer Chandor. He's replicating the ordeal of Redford in your own mind. I get it.
Only if I had somebody to talk to throughout it all. One wonders if the film could have been helped by letting us hear what Redford is thinking. After all, Chandor's first film "Margin Call" was a potpourri of wonderful dialogue uttered by a large cast. He does have a way with the word. Not here. And, frankly, if I had been in the same predicament as Redford, I would have been talking out loud a lot. And cursing.
While visually stunning, "All is Lost" ultimately leaves you stranded. You just want it to be over. It's clearly a movie you watch once and never revisit again.
Or perhaps you don't even watch it in the first place.
LEN'S RATING: Two and a half stars.
Dinner last night: Chicken sausage, red cabbage, and broccoli.
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