The movie All Is Lost, starring Robert Redford, from Academy Award-nominated writer/director J.C. Chandor, opened in theaters nationally in October 2013. While most movie reviews praised the film and heightened interest in the general public, considerable advance mention in the sailing media also evoked great excitement among sailors. Redford is almost universally mentioned as an Academy Award candidate, the film praised for its daring use of only one actor and almost no dialogue.

Yet the film is seriously flawed from a sailor's point of view - and perhaps dangerously so.

I agree it's a great movie for nonsailors. This solo sailor in the middle of the Indian Ocean encounters a very bad streak of luck and must fight silently and stoically to survive. Critics compare him to the fisherman in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and frequently mention Conrad, Melville, and other great sea storytellers. Here's a small sampling of comments from the film critics about the sailor. From the Washington Post: the "protagonist [is] isolated and adrift in the midst of an indifferent, wantonly cruel universe... Chandor distills that idea to its visually purest form yet, in a one-man study of revealing character through action." From SFGate: "All these clues tell us that this man has lots of money, that he is very sure of himself, that he is used to being the boss, that he is something of a lone wolf, and that he is exceptionally smart and prepared." From A.O. Scott at the New York Times: "his taciturn competence is something we are inclined to admire."

Scott also writes, "We infer that he is someone who can afford a comfortable, well-appointed yacht" - and that's where the problem starts from a sailor's perspective. Yes, he apparently has enough money for a decent sailboat and to finance his ocean adventuring. But his appalling lack of real safety gear - even the most common, inexpensive, and necessary - contributes overwhelmingly to his dire circumstances, and thoughtful sailors are moved to ask, over and over, if he's a fool or indifferent risk-taker, not at all the "competent," "smart," "prepared" man whose struggle is viewed as an epic, existential, man-against-the-sea theme. Epic hero, or epic fool?

I forgive landlubbers for not recognizing how frighteningly often this solo sailor reveals his incompetence and very serious lack of preparation for ocean voyaging. But once you do see all these flaws (as well as other lack of realism needed to move the plot), you can't help but raise questions. A few examples:

• In the beginning he wakes to find his cabin mostly flooded after striking the floating container. What, no automatic bilge pump or even a $10 bilge alarm? And later, he doesn't even have a handle for his cockpit bilge pump?
• The evidence is that he had electronic navigation (a GPS chartplotter, presumably) before losing electrical power. But what, no cheap handheld backup GPS? Even a smartphone could tell him his location! And when he discovers that his boat batteries still have some juice, he at least could have tried to wire his (waterproof) chartplotter directly to the battery.
• What sailor with even a few bucks carries a handheld VHF that is not submersible?
• What sailor crosses the ocean without an EPIRB or PLB for emergency help?
• Why does he have so very few flares? (Just enough to make a futile attempt for help - but not enough for easier rescue from the final boat.)
• Why does he stop the hull damage repair after only barely achieving a very flimsy temporary fix?
• Why does he not have an abandon-ship bag (with more food and water and other survival supplies) at the ready like all serious ocean sailors?
• Why is no lifejacket ever used? Why not at least take the prominently displayed life ring from the rail into the life raft?
• Why does he cease any fishing attempts after one small episode with a shark?
• And much, much more.

With all these questions, any sailor who has voyaged offshore, or even contemplated it seriously, has to think: No, I wouldn't have been like that. Not at all. Why is the Redford character like that? Is there evidence he is so old-fashioned that he wouldn't buy such necessary safety gear? No, his boat clearly carries a lot of expensive modern gear, including storm jib, sea anchor, and of course the life raft. But it's just enough gear to make the plot work - and lacking everything else that would destroy the plot by having him be rescued or giving him less difficulty. The plot depends similarly on other unrealistic elements such as his ease and accuracy in learning to use the sextant and calculating his position - a skill that takes time and perseverance to develop but which appears here easily to serve the plot by showing him drifting into and out of the shipping lane. And speaking of that, Times reviewer Scott, like other critics, praises his raft navigation as part of his wise problem-solving ability as "he sets a course for commercial shipping lanes"! While I generally like Scott's reviews, someone needs to tell him you can't steer such a raft: it simply drifts on wind and current. In this case it's a simple plot device to give him hope and then strip it away.

So what does all this really mean? Obviously the writer-director had sailor consultants advising him, but all these inconsistencies are still present. Was he simply sacrificing realism for plot mechanics? That certainly diminishes the movie's power for anyone who catches all the problems. This sailor would seem a fool in many ways while thoughtful and competent in others - a serious contradiction the film seems unaware of.

Or could there be a bigger irony here: is "our man" a smugly self-confident risk-taker who intentionally sailed into the middle ocean without taking the standard precautions of a even weekend coastal sailor? Or to go a step further: is he consciously or unconsciously suicidal? Psychoanalysts could have fun with that: perhaps one part of him does court death while another struggles on, just as in the final scene we see those contrary impulses head to head? Now that would have made for a really interesting drama if it had worked as a theme throughout. The fact that it doesn't, however, is evidenced by what seems a universal reaction among nonsailing viewers, that the man is wise and heroic in his struggle.

Although this is a movie review rather than an article on sailing safety, I would be remiss if I didn't at least include a link to an overview of the many types of safety gear this cinematic sailor should have had on his boat if he really were "competent."

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