The Impossible

Plot

wreckage

**This section contains SPOILERS**

In 2004, Doctor Maria Bennett, her husband Henry, and their three sons Lucas, Simon, and Thomas go on a Christmas holiday to Khao Lak, Thailand. Arriving on Christmas Eve, they settle in and begin to enjoy the brand new Orchid Beach Resort. Two days later on Boxing Day, the massive Indian Ocean tsunami inundates the area.

Maria and Lucas eventually emerge from the swirling water and find one another, with Maria having sustained serious injuries to her leg and chest. They help a toddler, Daniel, from the wreckage and are soon found by locals who dress and transfer them to a hospital in the city of Takua Pa. Daniel is separated from them during the journey. At the hospital, Maria encourages Lucas to help others find their family members while she goes into surgery for her chest injuries.

Meanwhile, Henry and the two younger boys have also survived and are together. Henry leaves Simon and Thomas with another family who are then taken to the mountains for safety by local relief crews. Henry stays behind to search for Maria and Lucas in the resort's rubble. While out looking, injured and alone, he is picked up by a passer-by and driven to a nearby bus station with other survivors. Communication facilities are scarce, but a European tourist named Karl, who has also been separated from his family, lends Henry his cell phone to contact his relatives in England. Henry promises Maria's father he will look everywhere for his family and that he will find them. Karl volunteers to accompany Henry to look for Maria and Lucas as well as his own family, who were at the beach when the tsunami hit.

While Maria is in surgery, her medical chart is mixed-up with a patient named Muriel Barnes, who has died. Lucas returns to find his mother's bed empty and is then taken to a tent where children without families are kept safe. The mistake is discovered when Lucas cannot identify any of the dead woman's jewelry and he is subsequently reunited with his mother, who had been moved to a private room in the ICU. While he waits in the hospital, Lucas finds Daniel, who has been reunited with his father.

Henry and Karl search for their families in various places before they arrive at the hospital, where Henry is given five minutes to look. Karl gives him a piece of paper with the names of his family members. A vehicle carrying Thomas and Simon also stops outside the hospital, and the boys get off so Simon can urinate. From a distance, Lucas recognizes his father, and while searching for him in the chaotic crowd outside, Lucas's brothers spot him and they reunite. Henry finds the three of them together. He learns that Maria is in the hospital, ready to undergo more surgery for her leg. As the anesthesia puts her to sleep, Maria experiences flashbacks of how she came to be injured and how she surfaced the water. While in surgery, Lucas tells Henry he has something really important to tell Maria.

The following day, the family boards an ambulance airplane to Singapore so Maria may receive further medical treatment. A representative from their insurance company, Zurich Insurance, assures them everything will be taken care of as Lucas sees countless people outside the hospital looking through patient lists. On the plane, Lucas tells his mother that Daniel is safe with his father. Maria cries and looks out the window at the chaos left behind as the plane takes off.

Release

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Warner Bros. released the film in Spain on 11 October 2012. The United States distribution rights were pre-bought by Summit Entertainment.

A teaser trailer was released via multimedia to the public on 26 December 2011. After a full-length English language trailer was released on 20 August 2012, a United States release date of 21 December 2012 was confirmed by Summit.

It was released on 11 October 2012 in Spain and in Ireland and the United Kingdom on 1 January 2013.

The film was released in the United States on 4 January 2013 and was made available by Summit Entertainment through a website streaming the film to members of SAG-AFTRA for consideration of the SAG awards.

It was released on DVD/Blu-ray in the United States and Canada on Tuesday, 19 March 2013, with a European release 13 May 2013.

Response

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Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 81% based on 202 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The screenplay isn't quite as powerful as the direction or the acting, but with such an astonishing real-life story at its center, The Impossible is never less than compelling." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating to reviews, the film had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave a perfect four-star rating, praising the performances of Watts and McGregor, and the direction of Bayona. He called it "one of the best films of the year."

Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter gave a very positive review, praising the performances of the two leading stars, stating that "Watts packs a huge charge of emotion as the battered, ever-weakening Maria whose tears of pain and fear never appear fake or idealised. McGregor, cut and streaked with excessive blood he seems too distraught to wash away, keeps the tension razor-sharp as he pursues his family in a vast, shattered landscape." About the film she added, "The Impossible is one of the most emotionally realistic disaster movies in recent memory – and certainly one of the most frightening in its epic re-creation of the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami."

Justin Chang of Variety magazine gave a positive review, praising Bayona's directing and Sánchez's writing: "Collaborating again after their impressive 2007 debut feature, The Orphanage, Bayona and Sanchez get many things right here, starting with their decision to eschew a more panoramic view of the disaster to follow one family's journey from start to finish." About the performances of the main cast members he added, "Watts has few equals at conveying physical and emotional extremes, something she again demonstrates in a mostly bedridden role, and McGregor, in one of his better recent performances, manages to turn a simple phone call home into a small aria of heartbreak. Holland, in his live-action bigscreen debut, is wonderful as a kind, somewhat short-tempered kid who still has plenty to learn, setting the tone for similarly heartrending turns by young Joslin and Pendergast."