Review | Adrift film review: Shailene Woodley stars as shipwrecked amateur mariner in engrossing true-life survival tale
Tough performance by Woodley, playing Tami Oldham – who, with fiancé Richard Sharp, was caught in a hurricane while sailing a boat to its new owners and improvises a sail to reach land – takes some liberties but is well made, neatly structured and portray effectively her grim battle with the sea
3.5/5 stars
Although the action in Adrift is not as detailed as that in All is Lost, the Robert Redford survival drama, it’s a well-made shipwreck movie with some exciting and poignant moments.
The direction of Baltasar Kormákur ( Everest ) errs towards the perfunctory, but a tough performance by Shailene Woodley, as a shipwrecked amateur mariner determined to guide her crippled yacht back to port, makes for an engrossing watch.
The film is based on the true story of Tami Oldham, an experienced sailor who took the job, with her fiancé Richard Sharp, of sailing a yacht from Tahiti to its new owners in San Diego, in the United States, in 1983. The pair ran into the massive Hurricane Raymond in the middle of the Pacific, and Sharp was swept overboard and lost.
The yacht was wrecked, but Oldham improvised a sail and navigated using a sextant, spending 41 days at sea before finding land.
