All you people who gave this movie a four or less,

I gave it a 5/10, but I honestly do not blame people who gave it lower.

Point-blank, it was not engaging enough. The character was not interesting enough for even a veteran actor to bring it to life. All he did was try to keep his boat afloat. That's good for 30 minutes at the most. Past that, something else needs to happen in the story.

We literally know nothing about this man except he's trying to survive. If I wanted to see a movie with flat characters fighting to survive, I'd watched a silly summer blockbuster and at least get a little bit of spectacle.

Because it was one of a heck of a drivel? Tedious and boring chore of a movie with an ending coming straight from a fairytale? Watching an old man f#k around for over an hour doing god knows what? With all the drama, BBC moments, storms and holes in the hull they STILL managed to make a BORING flick with no message, unless the message was go and buy a satphone and a radio that are waterproof before you go ocean sailing.

Watch Dead Calm or Open Water if you want some quality time spent in the water.

I gave it exactly a four after some consideration. If you can believe it, I actually watched this movie twice! Once I was on a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and I was excited to watch it. It was sort of engaging but I kept nodding off. I'd back up, try again, and nod off. All I remember thinking (every time I woke) was, "He's still stranded...nothing has changed." Anyway, I did manage to see the two near-rescues and the navigation by sextant. Anyway, I was thoroughly disappointed in the film.

A month or so later, I saw it was available for streaming and that it had high reviews. I then came to IMDB and saw it had a very good rating (7.9 I believe). So I thought that obviously I had missed something...being tired, viewing environment, etc.

Well, the second viewing was better, and the story much more immersive (chalk that up to the tiny in-flight screen and obnoxious cabin noise even with noise-canceling headphones). That said, I still didn't like the film. It felt like a student project to me (albeit a very expensive/professional one). So I came here to the IMBD boards and read discussions.

One point of view that almost saved it for me was that it was an allegory. I like this view. As I read the discussions here I was listening to the final song as the credits rolled and it seemed to lend itself to such a view. But after all the insight/interpretation/speculation I have come to this conclusion. If it was intended to be an allegory, it failed on that point as well. So in the end, I gave it a four. I almost gave it a five, but that is the tipping point between acceptable and not good, and I knew my experiences led me to the latter.

4/10.

Saw it on Netflix like most others while searching for late night entertainment. Now I loooove character development and plot, i'd throw action and fight scenes out the window for some good development, i'd watch Melancholia again over any Transformers movie. With that said, this was so ridiculous and a mess. I couldn't help but laugh at some of the scenes, the main character was unsympathetic, other than the fact he was old and alone. I couldn't relate and I didn't know him enough to feel any remorse really. Murphy's Law was strong with this movie, all the random storms, the can of beans, the constant flooding, the head hitting the pole, the ships ignoring him and the raft set aflame.. literally from the beginning it was just a series of unfortunate events. The ending literally made me laugh out loud, it was just too much. He LITERALLY had to lose everything, like the title implies, before the movie could end. His boat,food, water, books, his will to live, then okay you're good lets finish this.

because i was real excited about this movie but the guy's a very bad sailor; what happens to him is not about bad luck, it's about him being clueless about being a skipper and alone at sea.

pathetic & inaccurate.

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Big fan of character pieces, "prestige" films, and other flicks that some audiences might consider "boring", for whatever that's worth. I gave this film a 6 because, while beautifully shot and well-acted, I didn't feel like I could sympathize with Redford's character. It was hard for me to get "lost" in the film (something I quite enjoy doing, no play on the film's title intended) because I didn't feel like it gave me enough to work with as far as caring about Redford's character went.

I have never seen so many people who need to be hand-held through a film. Holy hell, these people should all stop watching movies. I liked your topic, and I gave this a 10. I really feel bad for the people who fell asleep during this, or laughed at the end. They must really just have a *beep* life.