Review: The Mercy

The Mercy (12A)

UK 2018 102 mins Dir: James Marsh Cast: Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewlis, Genevieve Gaunt, Jonathan Bailey, Andrew Buchan

Eddie the Eagle meets The Program in Man on Wire/The Theory of Everything director James Marsh’s true-life mash-up of two popular genres: the great British loser underdog flick and the sporting cheat movie. There’s even a dash of All Is Lost-style bobbing about on the ocean waves, as if to justify its existence as a film rather than a TV drama.

Meet Donald Crowhurst (Firth): part inventor, part plucky adventurer and part overreaching dreamer/buffoon/negligent tosspot (delete according to prejudice). Donald lives in scenic Teignmouth with his wife Clare (Weisz, in a thankless role that at least offers her an opportunity to perfect her ‘long-suffering’ expression) and hero-worshipping kids. He’s invented a thing called the Navicator, which doesn’t appear to have many takers. But Donald is a man who’s given to such Hallmark aphorisms as “dreams are the seeds of action” and his imagination is gripped by the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe contest – a gruelling single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Now you might think this is a tad ambitious for a man who hasn’t sailed further than Falmouth, but Donald gets the bit between his teeth, secures the reluctant backing of a local caravan salesman and takes on mildly sleazy former tabloid hack Rodney Hallworth (Thewlis) as his publicist. Hallworth seizes the opportunity to sell Crowhurst as an intrepid amateur taking on the big boys in a Churchillian ‘never say die’ display of British derring-do, and soon secures some big-name sponsors. As his oft-postponed departure approaches, our hero’s trimaran is bodged together with inferior materials and Clare starts to look more than usually long-suffering. Alas, Donald can’t afford to back out now or he’ll face ruin and lose the family home. This is all going to end in tears, isn’t it? Luckily, it’s the pre-satellite navigation era, which means the naughty yachtsman can easily fake his position.

Marsh clearly sympathises with Crowhurst, though you and I may be forgiven for thinking that he’s simply a bit of a berk. He’s solidly played by Firth, who gets to come over all beardy and dishevelled as everything goes wrong out at sea. But rather than serving up the full All Is Lost, immersing us in the hapless sailor’s plight as he starts to go bonkers on the briny, the film whisks us out of the high seas for copious flashbacks to his family life, which tends to suck it dry of tension. I shan’t give away the ending in case you don’t know how the story turned out. But as depicted here, the aftermath is both preposterous and unconvincing. Clare gets to deliver a big self-righteous speech about how it’s all the bloody press’s fault, which is presumably intended to chime with the modern, mostly hypocritical ‘blame the meeja’ stance adopted by everyone from Donald Trump downwards. But it simply doesn’t wash in this instance. The Mercy shows the press faithfully reporting the lies dished out to them by Team Crowhurst. If Clare has a right to be furious with anyone, it’s her own hubby – who is clearly the agent of his own misfortune.