The Impossible

Summit Entertainment | Release Date: December 21, 2012

7.8	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 375 Ratings

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User Reviews

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DanyeliJul 3, 2016

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is another great real life story (modified obviously) that gets turned into an insipid film. It could have been a great film since its based on a great story, but it lacks the profundity to really get it because it stays superficial. You can almost forget about the natural disaster and about how fragile life is. You just see this family making questionable decisions at times, the mother crying and moaning most of the movie and desperation of being lost. You can almost forget that this family is VERY blessed since they all ended up alive. I guess that wasn't important to the director as to show Naomi's breasts a few times. How was that useful? Even though it wasn't sexually oriented, it was completely unnecessary. She is a great actresses, she can do well without showing her nipple a couple of times. It just makes me feel that producer picked up a tearjerker story and mixed it up with breast flashes.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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brocklandhersFeb 3, 2013

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. What am I missing here? This is one of the worst movies I've seen recently.
The 5-10 minute tidal wave reenactment while spectacularly filmed, can't make up for the hollowness of the remainder of the story. There is barely any character development. But the most frustrating thing is that the viewer already knows the eventual outcome of this whole pointless exercise... that all the family members are still alive and in safe hands, and that they simply need to find one another amongst the chaos of survivors/aid workers. In the real world, one knows that eventually all will be reunited (at the very latest), through a phone line and next-of-kin contact.… Expand

2 of 4 users found this helpful22

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Brian_McInnisAug 19, 2013

c'The Impossible' is an absorbing, well-shot, well-acted film with convincing special effects. It is based on fact. It provides the experience of having one's family caught in a catastrophe with a vividness few other films have had. My qualmc'The Impossible' is an absorbing, well-shot, well-acted film with convincing special effects. It is based on fact. It provides the experience of having one's family caught in a catastrophe with a vividness few other films have had. My qualm is with the film-makers' decision, faced with an event that killed an estimated eight thousand people in Thailand alone and devastated countless families, to take for their subject an extraordinarily fortunate family of British tourists who were violently separated and endured terrific trauma, but who managed to find each other and return home with every family member alive.

The story of this family is pretty inspiring, but should Bayona have considered making a film about a Thai family that did suffer loss, as innumerable families did? Is his message that when calamity strikes us we suffer great terror and difficulty, but it will all be O.K. in the end? And why are nearly all the other people we meet in this movie also European? Why are there so few Thai people? Why does nearly every one speak English? Amid so much destruction, why do we see barely any dead people? Did one of the only films made about this titanic South-East Asian cataclysm really have to star Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts?… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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jgzegerMay 25, 2013

A rather boring flick about a father, mother and three sons who are separated when a tsunami hits. The rest of the film is about them trying to find one another. That's it! The star isn't Naomi Watts but rather all the flotsam and jetsam inA rather boring flick about a father, mother and three sons who are separated when a tsunami hits. The rest of the film is about them trying to find one another. That's it! The star isn't Naomi Watts but rather all the flotsam and jetsam in the aftermath of the tsunami. There are many more shots of the devastation and debris than there are of her, and for her fans, half the movie features Naomi's face full of bruises. I think you can do better.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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unruhe_Jun 11, 2013

The plot is bold and simple, soundtrack is over the top, and it is mocking the real victims of the disaster by focussing on the supposedly heartbreaking story of some westerners spoiled holiday while 300k died around them.

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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alessandrovergnJan 23, 2017

One start because the tsunami scene is technically realistic. That's all, you can change channel or change movie just after that, the movie is so unbearably and annoyingly predictable that is a real waste of time to watch. The lucky familyOne start because the tsunami scene is technically realistic. That's all, you can change channel or change movie just after that, the movie is so unbearably and annoyingly predictable that is a real waste of time to watch. The lucky family survives and everybody else dies...what a shame and an insult for the people who really suffered in this event.… Expand

2 of 5 users found this helpful23

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NazguleroApr 24, 2013

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. There is no way this movie can have a 73 rating on here. The movie is just so agonizing to watch. To start out with, there is no way the entire family could have survived this, as they show the guy and his two sons taking the full impact of the huge wave at the beginning of the movie. The boys don't even have a scratch. Just ridiculous. The endless sequence of the mother and the other son is just that...never ending moaning and screaming. They show a wound in the mother's right leg that is so huge that there is just no way she could walk, let alone...live. The blood loss would kill her in less than two minutes. The young boys say things young boys would never say in real life, it is way too obvious that they are just saying memorized lines. There is no character development whatsoever. The father leaves his two young boys, possibly all he got left, in the middle of the night to search for his wife and other son who are likely dead He doesn't even know where the boys are going. No father would do that.
Even the only possibly redeeming scene, the wave hitting land is, cheap and bad. This could easily be Ewan McGregor's worst role. Almost two hours of agony.… Expand

4 of 17 users found this helpful413

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msmith7632Nov 17, 2020

Too gory, too bloody, too much nudity. Should be rated R for mature audiences. Don't waste your time.

0 of 3 users found this helpful03

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BroyaxNov 28, 2017

On ne va pas se mentir, je me suis risqué sur ce naveton plus ou moins hollymerdien pour la belle Naomi, toujours aussi bien conservée qui exhibe du téton pour la bonne cause (bah ouais, un tsunami et ton petit haut tombe à l'eau) ; en outre,On ne va pas se mentir, je me suis risqué sur ce naveton plus ou moins hollymerdien pour la belle Naomi, toujours aussi bien conservée qui exhibe du téton pour la bonne cause (bah ouais, un tsunami et ton petit haut tombe à l'eau) ; en outre, elle se révèle toujours excellente actrice y compris dans ce genre de daubes... mais Naomi mérite clairement mieux que ça !

Hollymerdien pour la belle séquence -spectaculaire- de la grosse vague dans la gueule, hollymerdien typique également pour la guimauve omniprésente, omnipotente, omnisciente qui parcourt tout le film comme... un ouragan. Non, un tsunami de guimauve infuse et infusée avec les violons qui l'accompagnent (ils avaient fait le déplacement).

Evidemment, on comprend bien que c'est l'hécatombe chez les touristes qui ont mangé chaud, les **** bourgeois qui pensaient passer le Noël sous les palmiers... mais qu'est-ce qu'ils ont l'air con, tout de même. On suppose, on subodore qu'il faut tirer une larme devant ce drame "humain" mais on en rigolerait bien si on ne se faisait pas autant chier.

Si le premier quart du film (en dehors de l'exposition gnangnan syndicale) avec la mère et son fiston laisse une certaine impression de réalisme malgré son exagération, celle-ci fout le camp ensuite rapidement avec les nains qui réapparaissent comme par magie, puis les réactions des personnages peu naturelles et peu crédibles, surtout avec Ewan Kenobi qui a lui aussi (toujours) l'air d'un con.

Ce film est une telle catastrophe (sans jeu de mots) que je n'ai pas pu le finir, même en accéléré.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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