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70One of those movies that's good, but leaves you with the nagging feeling that it could have been better.
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78First, to dispel the two talking points attending The Impossible, Juan Antonio Bayona's dramatization of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: No, it's not racist, and no, you don't have to be a parent to feel the film in your bones.
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50An earnest, extremely grueling, prodigiously crafted true-life drama that takes one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history and reduces it to a bad day at Club Med.
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60The key selling point is Bayona's ten-minute reenactment of the tidal wave and its carnage, which is brutal, visceral and without peer. His visual mastery is almost enough to make up for The Impossible's conventional final hour and the empty feeling of trying to find the point of this whole exercise.
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88Yet as fine as she and Ewan McGregor are as the parents, Tom Holland stands out as eldest son Lucas, a slightly sullen teen who learns to put other people before himself.
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100Here is a searing film of human tragedy.
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75Everything that was false about the tsunami sequence in the recent Clint Eastwood film 'Hereafter' - the bland overview perspectives, the lack of human immediacy - is corrected, terrifyingly, by the first half-hour of director J.A. Bayona's nerve-shredding docudrama 'The Impossible.'
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Dec 31, 201280You can take issue with its overly Anglicised approach to an international tragedy, but there's no denying that this rousing, superbly acted, no-holds-barred melodrama is a mighty feat of physical filmmaking.
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83It's agony, in a rewarding way, to squirm and cringe and groan through an ordeal so realistically re-created.
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67It suffers from the greater problem of emphasizing a feel-good plot within the context of mass destruction.
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80Bayona achieves a rare sense of balance between the big and the powerful as well as the small and the intimate in the family's survival against impossible odds, no doubt the inspiration for the title.
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63Bayona is restrained here in terms of gore, but his landscape is a realistic vision of a hell we never hope to visit.
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Dec 6, 201265The latter half of The Impossible is so disappointingly movie-ish, tying a bow on the events after portraying them too vividly to allow them to be wrapped so neatly. It wrings out tears with an industrious efficiency that leaves you feeling manhandled after the exhilarating, terrifying footage that's unfolded before.
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80This is an affecting and emotional drama about the strength of the human spirit.
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80The most memorable turn, however, comes from young Holland. There is not a moment in which Lucas' fear, or unexpected courage, feels less than real.
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Dec 23, 201250I'm not sure any other actress today could have pulled this off without seeming cheap or manipulative. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the movie itself, which often traffics in the manipulative.
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100Put a staggering accomplishment called The Impossible, from Spanish director J. A. Bayona, at the top of the season's must-see list.
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75Anything following that spectacular sequence is bound to be something of a letdown - especially when it ends up playing like standard-issue Hollywood melodrama.
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65Starring flying debris and surging walls of water, The Impossible takes the template of the old-timey disaster movie, strips it to the bone and pumps what's left up to 11.
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88Watts is extraordinary - she manages both the physical and emotional demands of the role, with soul-deep conviction.
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91An extraordinarily gut-wrenching, intense story of survival against all odds.
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75The film's adult leads, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, give powerful, natural performances.
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88The go-for-broke intensity and emotional layering Watts brings to her role is an acting triumph. And McGregor matches her in a performance of ferocity and feeling.
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80Both here and in "The Orphanage," Bayona reveals himself as a masterful genre stylist of almost unlimited talent and a storyteller addicted to sentimental happy endings that feel a bit sardonic. Like, it's all OK now – but just wait till next time!
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75If one person survives and 6 million are killed, or one person gets out and 3,000 are crushed, it's not really a happy ending - or even an adequate representation of the larger event. This is precisely the challenge that The Impossible faces and never quite overcomes.
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12A sham realist's disaster movie, tackily insulting the deaths of 300,000 people by reducing the horrors of the Indian Ocean tsunami to a series of genre titillations.
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100Perilous incidents have riveted audiences since Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks, but in the hundred-year history of cinema, few thrillers have been as emotionally compelling as The Impossible.
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83Like "The Orphanage," The Impossible confirms that Bayona is a major talent, with a skill for constructing sequences that build tension as masterfully as Steven Spielberg did in his '70s heyday.
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75The Impossible looks back at a natural calamity with unflinching honesty. It sees fear and pain, it sees fortitude and bravery, but mainly it sees this: In that raging instant when the sea becomes its own monster, there's precious little to separate the devoured from the spared – nothing but the thin wedge of luck.
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Sep 12, 201280Part of the appeal of this affecting and powerful drama is that it puts the viewer right in the moment at every stage, using authentic locations and tsunami survivors to hammer home the reality of this tragedy.
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Sep 12, 2012100The Impossible is one of the most emotionally realistic disaster movies in recent memory -- and certainly one of the most frightening in its epic re-creation of the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
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50There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in The Impossible, which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday.
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50Movies are good at this sort of brute physicality, but the trouble with The Impossible is that is also tells a rather banal story. [28 Jan. 2012, p.81]
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33The Impossible strikes an insincere tone, one that doesn't let the obviously powerful moments stand on their own, but instead follows the beautiful Hollywood stars to safety, while the real story is left on the ground.
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90The Impossible is technologically a marvel - the tsunami experience is harrowingly believable - but also emotionally rich. I hesitate to use this term, since it is so often equated with hokey, but The Impossible is life-affirming.
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40When it comes to human emotions, however, the filmmaker is all thumbs, crassly fumbling for audience response via clichéd uses of dropped-out sound and the occasional twinkling piano.
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Dec 11, 201280Marshalling formidable technique and force of feeling, Bayona's tale of courage and empathy in the face of catastrophe fulfils his debut's promise, its harrowing conviction hammered home even harder by the spot-on casting.
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88This is a tale not only of epic disaster but also of resilience. The Impossible is a nimbly acted drama that is at once a stellar visual achievement and a life-affirming story of familial love and courage.
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100Wrenchingly acted, deftly manipulated and terrifyingly well made.
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50These horrors, and the absorbing performances of Watts and McGregor, will soon be undermined by a surfeit of sentiment.
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90Yet it's not just the visuals that make the movie what it is, a thrilling, if also punishing, tale of heroic endurance. The Impossible, based on a true story, derives most of its impressive power from two remarkable performances: Naomi Watts as Maria, and Tom Holland as Lucas.
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75The film is studded with many tiny, lovely moments.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 50 out of 56
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Mixed: 4 out of 56
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Negative: 2 out of 56
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10Best movie i have ever seen. It's has a lot of heart touching moment that can make you cry . it's was so real that can make you believe in that movie
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10The best Spanish film of the history of cinema.
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