The Turn: Verschollen im Südpazifik (2015)

The Turn: Verschollen im Südpazifik: Directed by John Laing. With Dominic Purcell, Peter Feeney, Owen Black, Greg Johnson. In 1989 the trimaran Rose Noelle set sail from Picton, New Zealand, bound for Tonga with four crew. After a freak wave capsized the yacht, they drifted for 119 days before landing on Great Barrier Island.

“I watched this with a few sailing friends and all, myself included, were impressed. It is a sea story well told.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut letu0026#39;s stand back from the actual real events for a moment. Hereu0026#39;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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eNow 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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWould 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. Donu0026#39;t expect dramatic back-ground music and people posing on the bow! The story.is a true one and it shows.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film is known by two different titles, u0026quot;Abandonedu0026quot; and u0026quot;Strandedu0026quot;, neither of which really match the story but then almost any other title would give away too much.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne thought to finish with: one of the most important things to have when your boat is taking a tumble is a mirror.”