Laura is an award winning journalist, who has always investigated the toughest of stories.
Overworked, and having recently witnessed a murder – she decides to take up an invitation to go on a superyacht of Billionaire Anne Bullmer, who has stage 4 cancer.
She plans on donating her billions to charity after her death, and has asked Laura to write an article on it.
While staying on the yaught, Lauren witnesses what she believes is a murder, having seen a body go overboard. With no sign of the body, and everyone on board accounted for, just who… or what did Lauren see?
Breakdown
The direction from Simon Stone is fine, but there is nothing overly breathtaking. A couple of “action” scenes are somewhat lackluster. It feels the advantage of expensive sets (the yaught) was the primary focus.
The character of Laura is supposed to be an ‘award winning’ journalist, who clearly is able to handle pressure well. However, she has an almost descend into madness arc, where she manically tries to tell people that there has been a murder.
We find out (rather early) that she is correct, and there indeed was a murder. We then spend a significant amount of time with her while she tries to bring the murderer to justice.
There are some disjointed moments, such as the disorganised and badly choreographed finale. The way they moved around, Sigrid’s running off to the gun, and that no one runs after Richard when he holds what is assumed his wife hostage?
The supporting cast was filled with some big names (Art Malik, Hannah Waddingham and David Morressy), but given the star power of some of them, why not give some of them more to do!
I think this is yet another movie that failed to work from book to film. There surely had to be themes/events that are only partially touched upon in the film (Laura’s witness of a murder) that are described better in the book (this might have been a reason she reacts so abruptly, and almost looses her grip on reality so quickly.
Overall
A misfire on this one unfortunately, with what I can only assume is a solid novel that didn’t work on film.
There are too many errors that I just couldn’t overlook (that’s not how hypothermia works).
I’d give this one a miss.
2.5/5
You can listen to my review on this one on my Podcast too.
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