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Created Jun 02, 2013 02:11PM PST • Edited May 05, 2024 12:38AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Thor Heyerdal and Kon-Tiki have been the coolest sounding names for well over half a century now. They certainly made an impression on me as a kid, when Heyerdal was already a longstanding legend. It didn’t hurt that his name was Thor – not uncommon for Nordics, yet still bold. He wore it well, becoming one of history’s great explorers halfway through the Twentieth Century by riding Kon-Tiki from Peru to Tahiti.

   He didn’t just ride it. He conceived the mission and balsa-wood raft that became Kon-Tiki, built it with a team he’d assembled, and then led them on a crazy nautical exhibition across 4,300 miles of ocean.

   Here comes the world historic part: Kon-Tiki demonstrated that Polynesians could have come from South America instead of Asia. Perhaps Pacific Islanders should be called Polymericans instead of Polynesians. Scientific authorities from Oslo to New York were not amused. Still aren’t.

   Hey now! Epochal change in understanding is rarely so stark as that triggered by Kon-Tiki, making Thor Heyerdal a Nordic cross of Albert Einstein and Indiana Jones — a man who conceived a new understanding of the world, and then risked life and limb to prove its veracity.

   The 1950 documentary about his bold voyage won an Oscar and made his name world-famous, along with that of Kon-Tiki, his authentically rickety craft. Now comes this 21st Century historical dramatization, which burnishes his legend and paints him as a benevolent European conqueror. Indeed, the paternal impulses of dead white men are rarely presented in such anodyne fashion.

   Kon-Tiki was Norway’s highest grossing movie last year. Why not. It’s about the most famous Norwegian of the past – what? – thousand years. And his Norwegian crew, plus his Norwegian wife, who’s a clear bonus. Plus it’s a perfect film, one that sets a new cinematic benchmark for close encounters with huge sharks and other exotic fauna.

   OTOH, what we have here is a story that’s earnest in the extreme, with no sex and merely mild titillation. It creates its excitement above the belt, one of the rare movies about a work-team accomplishing something big together. Apollo 13 comes to mind as one of the few others.

   If you liked Life of Pi, you’ll love Kon-Tiki, which beats that big blockbuster all to hell.

   If you think Thor Heyerdal and Kon-Tiki are the coolest names, you surely won’t be disappointed. While they’ve always sounded great, they’ve never looked better.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Pål Sverre Hagen plays Thor Heyerdal and Agnes Kittelsen plays his attractive wife Liv. Kittelsen, her last name is Kittelsen, a cute name for a very fetching actress.

   His band of Scandanavian ethno-pirates is played by Anders Baasmo Christiansen as Herman Watzinger, Tobias Santelmann as Knut Haugland, Gustaf Skarsgård as Bengt Danielsson, Odd Magnus Williamson as Erik Hesselberg (His name is sometimes written as Odd-Magnus. Isn’t that odd.) and the most handsome of all, Jakob Oftebro as Torstein Raaby, daredevil extraordinaire.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    A primo film, nearly perfect across the board, Kon-Tiki beats Life of Pi all to hell, considering both are tremendously cinematic films about small craft floating across the great Pacific Ocean, during which they experience oceanic wonders. Several close encounters with sharks – from large to huge to massive – up the thrills. Yet Kon-Tiki is merely truthy, where Ang Li’s cinematic fable is deeply surreal.

    Random notes:

    • Kon-Tiki itself doesn’t enter the film till half an hour in.
    • The encounter with the whale shark paints we humans as often vile intruders in unspoiled parts of the world. The massive fish is shown peacefully swimming under and around Kon-Tiki, until a crew member harpoons it in a panic. This incident really occurred, per the 1950 documentary.
    • Everyone speaks English in this Norwegian film about Scandinavians. Odd, but makes it easy for we English speakers.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Beautiful, moving and wondrous, the stunning visuals in Kon-Tiki include 1940s NYC, a massive whale shark, a school of great white sharks, huge luminescent jellyfish and more. Turns out there are over 500 VFX in the film, as highlighted in the nearby video. The sharks begin about 3:30 in.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

    Lots of shark blood and guts gets spilled and splattered, all of it VFX generated, as the nearby video shows. Still, it sure looks real and really bloody.

17. Sex Innocent 1.3

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Polite 1.4

21. Reality

    Glib 1.4

    Thor Heyerdal remains controversial all these decades later. For starters, his theory of South Americans being the first humans in Polynesia is not widely accepted, the Kon-Tiki voyage notwithstanding.

    More troubling are the inconsistencies between Heyerdal’s self-conception and the contrivances he employed. For instance, he viewed himself as a pure scientist, abjuring any construction materials for the raft that Tiki (i.e., ancient Polynesian man) himself couldn’t have used 1,000 years ago. But Tiki didn’t have maps, depth charts or current charts, not to mention a sextant.

    Tiki didn’t have sextants, but he almost certainly had lots more sex, since Heyerdal’s crew apparently didn’t have any. At least not any that they showed in Kon-Tiki.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Glib 1.6