Kon-Tiki - 3 smiles

“Kon Tiki” is an old-fashioned, man vs. nature movie, based on Thor Heyerdahl’s epic journey of 5,000 miles from Peru to Polynesia by raft in 1947. Heyerdahl’s book about this journey sold more than 50 million copies and a 1951 documentary earned the Academy Award. Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen), a born risk-taker from childhood, develops a theory that the Polynesia islands were not populated 1,500 years earlier by Asians, as was commonly thought, but by South Americans. (Although anthropologists largely doubt that theory today.) Whether it’s from stubbornness, ego or ambition or all of these, Heyerdahl, with the financial aid of the president of Peru, readies a journey to prove his theory and with his small crew, constructs a balsa wood raft that is christened Kon-Tiki, after the Incan sun god said to have guided ancient mariners.

Unfortunately, we know little about the crew. The downtime the men experienced would have provided screenwriter Petter Skavlan with ample opportunity for scenes in which the crew talked about their lives and allowed the audience to know them. Instead we get the Guy Who Plays the Guitar, the Guy with the Camera and the Guy with the Parrot. Nonetheless, there are thrilling scenes of a powerful storm; a tense, bloody shark attack; a close encounter with a whale and, at the end, a deadly reef to navigate. The fact that the outcome is known does not diminish the suspense or excitement of witnessing how Heyerdahl and company accomplished an amazing feat. 4/28/13