Tom Hanks and a tiger have done it, so why not Robert Redford? All Is Lost is about a man lost in the Indian Ocean and his attempts at survival. All Is Lost contains some very powerful terror sequences and a solid acting job (wordlessly) by the wily vet Redford. However, All Is Lost to me felt like a longer version of a survival type show.
The nameless character (Redford, called Our Man on IMDB) wakes up with a hole in the side of his boat and a looming storm a few days away. He prepares for the rough times like any worthy seaman would do, and as circumstances become tougher and tougher, he his forced to confront his own mortality and the limits of his ingenuity.
The storm sequences take up the majority of the screen time. Director JC Chandor clearly has lots of ideas how to make them compelling in different ways than Life of Pi, Cast Away, The Perfect Storm, or any other seafaring film. Chandor uses two effective techniques in All Is Lost: claustrophobia and disorientation (thankfully, not by shaky cam). When Redford gets trapped below deck and the ship capsizes, he is stuck in a dark enclosed space with various creaks and groans from the ship that make the audience worry about any vulnerabilities in the ship. Sometimes, Redford has to go above deck during the storm (not entirely convinced this isn’t a plot device) and he gets tossed around the ship into the water; many of these scenes show just how little power Redford has over his personal situation, and show just how ready he is by his stoicism and calm demeanor regardless of the many situations he is put in.
Impressively, there are only about 25 words spoken in this film, mostly logical statements. In fact, Redford gets one personal statement about 2/3 of the way through the film, rightfully said. It is incumbent that he use his face or his actions to dictate how he is feeling since he is mostly working on a project or trying to survive a growing loss of water. Redford gets one big scene where he does some emotive work and a couple of despair moments in the shipping channel but other than that, he is mostly doing solid unspectacular work. I’m not sure you can replace Redford with just anybody, but it’s not a tour de force of acting.
All Is Lost is a solid survival guide and Robert Redford Oscar Nomination vehicle. It comes off like a movie with something new to say, but instead it reorganizes beats in other movies with a few minor twists. I look forward to more years of “wise old Robert Redford” roles that will eventually win him that Oscar that has sadly eluded him.