Adrift

I sometimes think I'm overly cautious, not spontaneous enough. In that I'll treble check I've got my keys, shut the windows and fed the cat before I go out - you know the kind of thing. Of course all that checking usually means I forget to turn off the soup or feed my mother, but hey, that only happened the once, OK? And she never noticed. (Telly must have been good that night, if not the soup.) So I get irritated by obvious Careless-People-Tsk-This-Is-A-Disaster-In-The-Making scenarios, as happens in this film.

They make me squirm and huff and look at my watch to see how much longer there is to go. I did a bit of that for the first half of this film, so the surprise for me was suddenly realising that the director and actors manage to turn this copycat Dead Calm/Open Water movie into a tight knit piece of ensemble acting. I always know when I get irritated with a character (eg anyone in Eastenders) that the actor is doing a fab job: I was longing for the Michelle airhead character to be slapped LONG before it happens. Sadly, the poor girl has every right to whine about what's happened to her. Don't read on if you don't know why they get into trouble and intend seeing the film.

Apparently based on fact - although I've not managed to dig up anything to substantiate this - three couples and a baby meet up for a yachting weekend off the Mexican coast. Before you can say "I'm thirsty", they're in deep doo-doo, having jumped into the sea for a swim without checking that the yacht's ladder has been let down. What with night coming on, no ships within hailing distance and the possibility of circling sharks, the day isn't about to get any better. Add to this a crying baby and you can imagine the horror.

A German film in English, the cast is American. I've read there's some kind of political subtext here: an anti-Bush sticker on a car window, the American flag ripped in half at one point - but I think that's reading too much into what is simply a film about a thoroughly horrendous accident, caused by one teeny-tiny mistake. I'll not worry about being house-key neurotic again.