Row
In the warm bed of the guest house atop the rocky cliff face on the coast of Hoy in south west Orkney she drifts, semi-conscious, through the sea of memories and dreams and nightmares, Megan Taylor washed ashore two weeks before, almost dead of exposure and malnutrition, Detective Chief Inspector MacKelly waiting for her to recover sufficiently that she is able to be questioned about her ordeal.
Departing in late September 2023 under stormy grey skies in an attempt to break the world record for rowing across the Atlantic from Newfoundland in Canada to Ireland, Megan is the only one who has been found, her best friend Lexi Townsend and skipper Daniel King still missing, with unanswered questions over the identity of the fourth member of the team, a replacement for Lexi’s boyfriend, MacKelly saying there is no evidence anyone else was on board the Valiant.
A mystery thriller tossed on stormy waters and turbulent emotion, Row is the technically ambitious feature debut of director and editor Matthew Losasso, starring Bella Dayne, Sophie Skelton, Akshay Khanna and co-writer Nick Skaugen as Megan, Lexi, Dan and Mike, with Tam Dean Burn as DCI MacKelly and Mark Strepan as Adam, his planned participation in the Transatlantic effort made impossible by a broken leg.
Not a film for those who have a fear of open space, of deep water or of drowning, Row is an impressive achievement but not necessarily a satisfying one, the two-hour running time unable to support the increasingly sparse material and the film feeling like an endurance test itself despite the performances of the ensemble, personalities poorly matched from the outset who find that rather than being brought together by the trial the cracks in the hull only grow, paranoia and resentment supplanting solidarity.
The team supposedly having been practicing for two years yet astonishingly poorly prepared, there is difficulty believing Dan’s suspect motivational tools and profound lack of leadership skills would not have become apparent sooner, a short-tempered bully whose only focus is the goal, hectoring the women and thinking the threat of starvation will encourage them to push harder, nor is it convincing that he would bring Mike into the crew without even meeting the others before launch, though worse is to come.
The bickering turning to arguments turning to violence, self-defeating behaviour not witnessed since Open Water 2: Adrift, Dan claims that Mike is a murderer on the run, his best hope at remaining incognito obviously the press waiting to greet their safe arrival, though with waves of deception and betrayal and Megan an unreliable narrator as she assembles her choppy narrative, when the soggy finale arrives with the sound of a vacuum cleaner drowning out what might have been important dialogue it scarcely matters what the undercurrents of truth might have been.
Row will be in UK cinemas from Friday 5th September
