The Impossible is a mesmerizing movie. It captures the tsunami and its devastating aftermath very skillfully and effectively. Naomi Watts is good. (An Oscar nomination? I don’t quite see that.) Ewan McGregor is really good, as is the oldest child (Tom Holland.) All the supporting and incidental acting is pretty decent. It’s not a fantastically interesting or impressive story (I would never need to see this film again,) but it definitely holds your attention the first time through.

But there’s something a little weird about this film. The subtitle is “Nothing is More Powerful than the Human Spirit,” but really it should have read “Nothing is More Powerful than Dumb Luck.” There is very little human spirit on display here, at least not in a way that is explicitly emphasized. The family’s survival is remarkable, yes, but their survival is almost wholly the product of getting lucky in the flood waters and being found in time by the local population. Yes, they fought to live, so did all the people that died when the water smashed them into things, a lot of good the human spirit did those poor fuckers! There are almost no selfless acts on display here – one guy loans Ewan McGregor a cell phone, big fucking deal. The kid only reunites two people. Naomi Watts does save one kid. It’s just that I expected a convincing and moving depiction of the tragedy as a whole, and how the people involved set everything aside in the name of mutual survival. I also think that omitting how the tragedy effected the lives of the people who lived there was pretty questionable as well. I would even go so far as to suggest that there is something vaguely racist about the way the local population was portrayed.

The Impossible is really all about how lucky this one family was, which is a strange message given how many people died in the thing. Disaster movies need to have balance, there needs to be some recognition of the true nature of the disaster while you are telling stories of survival. No one wants their nose rubbed in how lucky other people were – that’s not a good story! It would be like making Titanic and focusing on some privileged dope who got lucky and made it into the first life boat, and then fell asleep as the ship went down.

Which brings us to this film’s very unfortunate coda: their insurance agent meets them wearing a smart suit, and they are whisked away in a private jet to get top medical care in Singapore. What the fuck?! The plane they were on was empty, except for them! Don’t you think there were a few other people there who wanted to get the fuck out of that hell hole, or could have used better medical attention in Singapore? What kind of fucked up message is that? I guess nothing is more powerful than being able to afford good health insurance.

But it’s okay, because Naomi Watts sheds a tear as she looks out the window of her private jet, although I suppose it’s possible it’s merely a tear of self pity.