All Is Lost is one of those rare films that comes out of nowhere with minimal expectations and blows everyone away: who knew that a simple movie with a simple premise, lacking almost any dialogue and featuring just one actor, could be so darn engaging? Well, it happens. If All Is Lost is to be Robert Redford's swan song, then so be it: what a great way for this Hollywood icon to leave his mark. All Is Lost seems to have been intentionally designed as a showcase for Robert Redford: The Actor, of course, who has made increasingly fewer cinematic turns as of late. The premise is basic: Redford plays a man, known only as "Our Man," who ends up lost at sea. For 106 crippling minutes, we watch as he exhaustively battles the ocean and attempts to survive. And you can tell that Redford is putting absolutely everything he has into this performance - many critics have even gone as far as to call his turn here the performance of his career. Hyperbolic, perhaps, but such praise doesn't feel like an overstatement: this is a compelling and vividly real movie, one that gravitates around its leading man, who shows us what acting really looks like.
