Movie review: 'All is Lost,' 3 stars

"All is Lost" finds Robert Redford playing an unnamed man with an unexplained background who confronts his mortality when a shipping container plows into his yacht, demolishing the electrical equipment and leaving him stranded somewhere in the South Pacific with a giant hole in the boat's hull.

Aside from a tiny bit of narration and approximately ten spoken words, J.C. Chandor's film is free of dialogue. The speaking is done in the sounds: waves battering the boat, thunder crashing in the clouds, the grinding and banging of methodical repair efforts and the silences of calm days that belie the mounting dread.

The story is told in movement -- the way Redford traverses his vessel with a thinking man's purpose at times and with the defeated posture of an overwhelmed victim at others, the character's progressive stillness as the magnitude of the situation washes over him, the tumult of a brutal storm, a steady drift toward the unfamiliar horizon.

The camera gets in close, showing us the fear in the character's face and the simultaneous resolve to keep going. It moves alongside him, ingraining us in his perspective. But Chandor isn't afraid to pull away to show soaring shots from high above that forcefully remind us of the miles and miles of hostile water threatening this lonely voyager.

The result is an existential depiction of this premise in its most basic form. We have a man and a damaged boat, alone on the water, tapping into every bit of his sailor's knowledge in a desperate bid to save his life. "All is Lost" isn't an edge-of-your-seat technological marvel like "Gravity," which has a similar story, or a mystical probe of divinity like "Life of Pi."

The movie simply is what it is, carrying us alongside the character as he is sent though the proverbial wringer. It's been scripted with a keen eye for the procedures in this situation, keeping the protagonist's behavior within a plausible realm. The obstacles he faces are believable consequences of life in a damaged boat on the open seas.

Above all, the movie works because Chandor has Redford. The star has a tough road here, asked to make the act of thinking compelling and dramatic and to imbue the small steps of survival with the weight of a lifetime's experiences. The veteran makes it happen, of course, showing us the full measure of a man without saying much of anything. The voice might be silent but the soul is there and the magnitude of all that is lost hits home.

All is Lost
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Starring Robert Redford
Rated PG-13
Playing at Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square, City Cinemas 1, 2 &3