Ron Howard and Chris Hemsworth obviously got on well together making RUSH that they’ve teamed up again as director and leading man for IN THE HEART OF THE SEA.

Obviously, they are anxious to do something different, and certainly a film about sail boats is pretty far removed from Formula 1 racing.

The film begins promisingly with Ben Wishaw playing a young writer, Herman Melville, visiting a rum riddled old mariner, Thomas Nickerson, played by Brendan Gleeson. Nickerson is a washed up whaler who has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder since his voyage on the Essex.

Melville wants to mine Nickerson’s experience for a novel, the book that will become Moby Dick.

Flashback to the time of the voyage and Hemsworth plays Owen Chase, an experienced whaler, who is assigned first mate on the Essex under the command of a greenhorn captain, Pollard, played by Benjamin Walker. Their relationship is fraught and puts ship and crew under great stress. What with the weather and a bloody great big whale, the mammalian equivalent of the shark in JAWS, you just know it’s going to end badly.

What should have been a rush under full sail of suspense, excitement and adventure, is becalmed almost as soon as we leave Wishaw and Gleeson, the drama sitting in the doldrums, the narrative harpooned, and bloated like a beached whale.

Not even an impressive cast of crew that includes Cillian Murphy, Joseph Mawle and Paul Anderson, can stop this pic becoming a shipwreck on the shores of poor CGI and a waterlogged script. All responsible should be keel hauled.

Ron, stick with mermaids and leave the great whites to Steven.