Kon-Tiki (2013)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Beautiful, moving film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

KON-TIKI is a realistic re-enactment of Thor Heyerdahl's famous voyage in 1947 in which he crossed the Pacific on a raft made of balsa wood. Well-cast and with an eye for authenticity, this takes the viewer on a journey with a bunch of tanned actors in the middle of a wide and desolate ocean with only the sun for company. The only real problem with this film is that there's little conflict in the narrative and that which does take place feels a little bit exaggerated. Scenes of the characters being attacked by sharks and the like are familiar but well portrayed, and the cast members are certainly all up to the job.

Kon Tiki I love this movie. It is about a Swedish or Finnish or whatever explorer and his team who sails across the ocean on a raft to prove cross-continental colonization of a South American tribe took place in the orient. Funny how some of the best films are based on true stories. Anyway, the film is well acted, well told, well this and well that. Just go and check it out. Totally a ten out of ten kind of deal for sure. There is a reason why they picked this director to direct the latest POTC movie, which wasn't half bad by the way. In fact it was the second best Pirates movie made to date; not sure why the critics trashed it. Seriously, critics are killing Hollywood by calling trash treasure and treasure trash.

I was intrigued by the story of Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition which took place in an era without GPS, mobile phones etc. This is sooo normal for us now, even though I myself have lived 3/4 of my life without this technology as well.I very much liked the look of this movie, almost reminded me of the glorious technicolor movies of the '40s-'50s in which it is actually situated. You can feel the blistering sun out at see and sense the tropical heat in Fatu Hivu, the use of colour and light is outstanding, in the Pacific as well in the scenes shot in Norway. Loved it.I understand Thor Heyerdahl wasn't the most sympathetic bloke around, but even in a movie about him there could have been made more effort in trying to get the audience to understand his motives. We see a brief synopsis of his life in Fatu Hivu, but the movie switches to it straight from his Scandinavian childhood without much explanation. Why did he become a zoologist and geographer in the first place? Unless I missed this, I still don't know why. It kind of got in the way of me understanding his sudden and uncontrollable drive to prove the theory of Tiki.Heyerdahl obviously was a very driven, ambitious and intelligent man, stubborn and a bit of a dictator as well. Very few successful men/explorers would have survived without these characteristics, so that's fine. In the movie, they tried to show another side of him, more vulnerable, privately doubting his decisions, sometimes even being afraid (and he only shows that in private, never to other people). When the movie premiered, actor Pal Hagen was the same age as Hayerdahl when he made the voyage. When you consider this, a young man, only 33, undertaking this epic trip, that must have been a daunting command. Hagen did a great job in portraying Heyerdahl in this stage of his life. I also liked actor Gustaf Skarsgard as Bengt and Tobias Santelman as Knut.There are a lot of scenes leading up to the actual raft trip, and some flash-back scenes as well (with one about Thor and an injured Liv trying to get help by alarming a sailing boat passing Fatu Hivu: what was that for and what did it mean for the movie... I still can't figure it out). The actual trip is more about the first 20 days when they seem to be drifting in the wrong direction; as soon as they catch the right current, next we know they are crashing into Raroia. That's ±75 days gone in a few minutes.There are some other irregularities. The way the Kon-Tiki crew is choosing, for instance. Apart from one childhood friend, and a refrigerator salesman, there is no explanation for any of the other crew members other than that they are Scandinavian and that they have some sort of skill that Thor can use. I read that each of these men were in fact very, very skilled technicians, smart and experienced. In the movie however, they come across as amateurs, a bunch of randomly generated men, not very stress resistant. That clearly was so not the case, I was sorry that the director/producers thought it would be more interesting to create some tension between these men whereas in reality they were a well oiled team, disciplined and focused. I mean, at the end of the movie they show that Herman went to become a UN international representative for Fishing! And in the movie he was just a scared, shiftless refrigerator salesman who doubts Thor all the time and is constantly thinking they will all die at sea.And the parrot/shark killing scene was indeed OTT, as well as the fake beards at the end (that was even ridiculous).I liked the movie, did not love it. But it has made me interested in the figure of Heyerdahl and the many, many expeditions he did after Kon-Tiki. Meanwhile, DNA investigation has proved that Polynesians do descend from South Americans, if in percentage much less than from Asians.An entertaining movie. I can understand its nomination for the Oscars, the look and feel of it are great, but I can equally understand why it didn't win. I'm going to try and find Heyerdahls own documentary, which DID win an Oscar in 1951.I was sorry to not have been able to watch it in Norwegian, which I think would have made the dialogues between the actors more wooden than it now was. For commercial purposes, and English version was made.

Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdal comes up with the idea that South Americans could travel from the east to Polynesia as he visits the area. Nobody believes that pre-Columbian civilizations had the ships to travel those great distances. With support and a ragtag team, he builds a balsa wood raft in 1947 and set off on a 101 day adventure.It has a bit of drama and a good sense of wonder in it. There is also a sense of impending danger. The ocean filming is well done. I'm not sure how much CGI if any was used. The marine life look very realistic. The sharks are great. The actors are not known to me but they do a good job. The movie has a good sense of doom despite the fact that everybody knows they made it in the end.