Dir. Ryan Little, USA, 2011, 91 mins

Cast: Danny Glover, Corey Sevier, Sofia Pernas, John Kepa Kruse, Vinnie Jones

Review by Dee Pilgrim

Melville’s classic and epic tale of one man’s obsession with his nemesis is re-imagined here into a fable that could have been fascinating, but through lack of money and courage falls short of the mark.

In the original Captain Ahab sails off into the unknown in search of the great white whale that has robbed him of his health and right mind. Here, Ahab (Glover) is captain of a land locked armoured vessel hunting the great white dragon that has disfigured him and continually eludes him, as if taunting him into actions that are rash and which put his crew in danger. On board with him are his adoptive daughter Rachel (Pernas) and two hunters new to the quest; the idealistic Ishmael (Sevier) and his faithful companion Queequeg (Kruse).

They have joined Ahab’s crew for the adventure and to make money from the vitriol harvested from the dragons they kill, but it soon becomes clear to them that landing a bumper haul of dragons is the last thing on Ahab’s mind; he is after ‘his’ dragon and nothing will stop him, when he gets a sniff of its scent.

With much of the film’s dialogue seemingly lifted straight from the original book, the film plays out like one of those alternative versions of Shakespeare’s plays, where they are lifted piecemeal and plonked down in a new setting (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, set in Venice Beach, California, comes to mind). It is an intriguing concept but it is let down by two things; not enough money to realise the CGI dragons the film’s action sequences need to keep its momentum going, and a real damp squib of an ending that feels like a whimper after the portentous beginning.

While Vinnie Jones plays vintage Vinnie Jones, Glover certainly has the gravitas and the delivery of sometimes quite abstruse lines to make Ahab a complex and twisted character. But when his great opponent is missing for whole chunks of the movie and then only appears for seconds at a time, the impact is weakened. So an opportunity only half realised and a film that could have had a real tang of the different and challenging about it, but which turns out quite tame and ordinary.