Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006)

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the tsunami tragedy was re-enacted. The acting and the writing stand above the other craft.The execution is compelling thoroughly. It boggles my mind to find so many negative reviews on this site. This film in my opinion presents an honest and comprehensive account of the tsunami tragedy and its aftermath, it explores the causes, it attaches blame without luridness, it visits the foundation of the family as a institution in the midst of a life altering crisis, it is emotionally compelling, it is educational, it is thought provoking. This film made my everyday problems feel like a picnic at the park.I didn't know Tim Roth was that good.

Bad acting, Over-reliance on emotions that don't get expressed properly, Offers no interesting/original story or point of view. I agree with others that it has too much of the inaccurate documentary and very little of the Thai people's suffering and grief. This film was truly disappointing for such an earth shattering event. One of the greatest natural disasters in history affecting millions of people seems truly small and the main characters concerns and tragedies feel like petty whining. The Tsunami was a much larger and important event than what this film manages to convey. It truly does not live up to the challenges set out for something of this magnitude.Any amount of taste garnered by the dignified responses of the main characters is undermined by the films total focus on tourists as the main sufferers of this tragedy, totally bypassing what this event meant for the millions of locals who were affected.As a person who is very well acquainted with the toll a natural disaster can take I was extremely bored and disillusioned with this portrayal.

It is television after all so I kept waiting for the good news. Where was it? Certainly in this story of massive human suffering there has to be some good news. Okay... I'll give the producer/director/writer some leeway in that they wanted to tell a story about the Tsunami for a western audience so that probably accounts for the seemingly bizarre absence of any Thai person of note in the movie with the exception of hard working kitchen staff boy. Thank god for the western NGO worker to help those poor villagers who had fled to the hills . . . and then the Brits who came to the aid of the villagers. I am living in Thailand now and find that the Thai are quite capable (despite a bizarre bloodless coup of a freely elected Prime Minister to restore democracy?) of doing some really good things.. and doing quite a bit for themselves. There was an attempt to show the difference in response to this disaster on the part of the Thai (why it was o.k. for them to burn bodies w/o identification). But.. please.. where was the good news in this movie?

I'm sure the decision to do a mini-series(?) on the 2006 tsunami was not an easy one to make. In all fairness, I can't imagine any fictionalized account of a major disaster like this one not being inadequate in trying to examine what really happened. Although this wasn't as thoroughly offensive as Titanic (you can stop reading here if you're a big fan of that film), where the deaths of hundreds pale as compared to the lives of two fictional teenagers, this film falls far short of giving the dead their just do. Most bothersome of all, the film feels unfocused and uninspired...perhaps the project should have been given to someone with a real point of view...or better still shouldn't have been done at all. The actors give it their best, although truthfully most of it never rises above the level of soap opera. Every time a storyline pokes it's head out of the water it gets carried off in the undertow. Tasteful? Yes. Interesting? Sorry, Discovery Channel could do better in one third the time. Ultimately I found it surprisingly insignificant...this is not HBO, it's TV.