It all seems doomed from the start-and never in the same throat-gripping class with such fateful horrors-at-sea epics as Adrift or Robert Redford's All is Lost.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 30, 2018

The film has been made with plenty of sincerity and no small amount of effort, but with no idea of what it wants to say.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 30, 2018

An engrossing character study of an ordinary man whose extraordinary ambition proves his undoing.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 29, 2018

Firth and his director find something quietly touching, even soulful, in the character's wretchedness.

| Nov 29, 2018

I walked away from this picture both moved and confused.

| Nov 26, 2018

His story is a compelling one, but the film that tells the story doesn't do it full justice. It will be interesting to see if a rival film, Crowhurst, which was made on a much smaller budget, is more successful in this respect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 9, 2018

It defies comprehension that a director as accomplished as James Marsh... was involved in this woefully misconceived (and suspiciously long-delayed) period drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2018

Watching Crowhurst slowly crack is the cinema equivalent of filling your pockets with pebbles and chucking yourself into the Solent.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2018

It's no heroic tale; 'The Mercy' is thoughtful, uncomfortable viewing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 18, 2018

Firth laps up the ambiguity, expertly conveying the mess - the brilliant mess - inside Crowhurst's head.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 9, 2018

Colin Firth is interesting casting as Crowhurst: he is very good at suggesting the man's decency and likability as well as his perfectly genuine courage and ingenuity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 9, 2018

How they got the Donald Crowhurst story wrong is its own minor tragedy.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 9, 2018

[Colin] Firth is all at sea but this retelling of Donald Crowhurst's round-the-world adventure should still keep you hooked

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2018

This is a deep, intelligent portrait of a man with quixotic ideas of making his name, and a man whose soul frayed at sea.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2018

The film is as much about Britishness, class and codes of honour as it is about sailing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2018

Meltdown measured by the cubic millimetre: that's what Firth gives and it's perfect. This is a sea voyage in which we truly navigate by a star.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2018

"The Mercy" tells its story - once headline material, now poignantly little-remembered - about as well as it can be told.

| Feb 6, 2018

A noble attempt to fictionalise an impossible story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2018

Despite the hint of a stiff-upper-lip kind of reserve, this is astonishingly brutal. And Firth's performance makes this dark, dark story land.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 5, 2018

Uninspired biopic sheds little light on unfathomable maritime mystery.

| Feb 4, 2018