Abandoned

Made for TV movie (true story) about a capsized trimaran yacht and how it's crew survived for over 100 days. Well done and reasonably accurate about the sailing offshore in a performance multi-hull. Unlike most disaster / redemption films this one obviously was done by people who knew their topic.

I enjoyed this film as unlike most it made me feel they did not dumb down the content assuming everyone watching could not truly understand the situation. As a sailor I found this film quite realistic.

I feel the actors did a good job of representing the people in the crisis and they avoided overacting with restraint.

I'd heard about this situation and the controversy, so seeing the film added a lot of context to news from the other side of the world.

It's not a bad movie, the only problem is that none of them looks like being lost in the sea for 119 days. I'll take that as a production error, for instance, movies like Cast Away, Life of Pi, ... actors would gradually "look" like they've been lost in the sea for that long (skinny, tanned, sun burned, dehydrated, messy long hairs, dirty, torn clothes, ... etc..). But in the movie "Abandoned", actors look about the same from the beginning to the end (check Dominic Purcell's hair ...). Also, most of these types of movies, it will either emphasize the scientific/technical parts, or the mental/spiritual aspects of human, but this movie just very lightly grazed through any of it, and it's a movie that leaves no impact, no thoughts after.

this is truly are great movie. The story is told in a very "natural" fashion, concentrating on the inner feelings of the protagonists. still at no time there is something as length in this film. in opposite its the "little" motions, sudden turns and details that keep the tension up. Dominic Purcell is acting brilliantly and his fellow sailors are doing great as well. I would - just for cinematic reasons of course - hope for a second part. The actual incident was really dramatic, so I really do not want anything like this happen in the real world. I like movie setting in which more or less random people are bound together in a close room or so like "12 angry men". this picture could become one of the cult movies showing how different men cope with critical situations

I watched this with a few sailing friends and all, myself included, were impressed. It is a sea story well told.

But let's stand back from the actual real events for a moment. Here's a film that departs from the current trend in several important and positive directions: The story-line is clear. The voices are intelligible (even if the accent is from the far side of the globe for me). The flash-backs are clearly differentiated from the front-line story. There are not 1026 sub-plots. There is no sexual spicing up of the main story. As far as I could tell there was no subliminal advertising. What a pleasant change from the unintelligible mixup-gatherum of multi-plot nonsense that bombards us these days.

Now back to the sea. I found the story moved along nicely with variations in mood and happenings. It is rare for a true story to be so well told and to maintain interest. It even had the authenticity of a self-righteous skipper who was lavish in his criticism of his crew. My sailing friends wondered why he had no real crew in the first place. Yes, indeed.

Would this appeal to a non-sailing audience? I think it would. There is not exactly an excess of sailing jargon and the four main characters have an adequate range of personalities to maintain interest. Don't expect dramatic back-ground music and people posing on the bow! The story.is a true one and it shows.

The film is known by two different titles, "Abandoned" and "Stranded", neither of which really match the story but then almost any other title would give away too much.

One thought to finish with: one of the most important things to have when your boat is taking a tumble is a mirror.

Substandard. Almost detracted from the story. Seems like the story was told from one persons point of view.