Robert Redford is clearly the unluckiest person alive in All Is Lost. Alone at sea, his yacht is holed (and radio destroyed) by an errant shipping container, and he’s then plagued by a series of mishaps and mistakes that he deals with stoically, pragmatically and mostly silently – without a lot of the panic and Tourette’s-level swearing that would’ve been prevalent had it been me in the same boat (as it were). Redford is impressive. Three boats were harmed in the making of this film.
All Is Lost shot in the Fox water tank in Baja, site of Titanic and Master and Commander to name but two. I noticed The Bahamas on the credits too; the open water filming enclosure there is one of the largest in the world. Malta’s is the other famous one. It been part of my recommendation that the 20 hectare, beachfront Natal Command site that’s earmarked for development as a film studio also undergo site evaluation for a Southern Hemisphere tank. At least the water would be warm.