Plot
James and his three closest lifelong friends go on an ill-advised trip to the stunning coastal area of Barafundle Bay in West Wales. What follows is a touching and comical adventure dealing with friendship, heroism and love.
Release Year: 2010
Rating: 6.7/10 (648 voted)
Director:
Hattie Dalton
Stars: Hugh Bonneville, Tom Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch
Storyline James and his three closest lifelong friends go on an ill-advised trip to the stunning coastal area of Barafundle Bay in West Wales. What follows is a touching and comical adventure dealing with friendship, heroism and love.
Cast: Hugh Bonneville
-
Beachcomber
Tom Burke
-
Davy
Benedict Cumberbatch
-
James
JJ Feild
-
Miles
Rupert Frazer
-
James' father
Nia Roberts
-
Chloe
Adam Robertson
-
Bill
Eros Vlahos
-
Angel Boy
Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers):
When Bill and James have an accident while abseiling down a small cliff face, Bill calls out 'JJ' the real name of actor JJ Feild instead of the character name Miles.
Quotes:
[last lines]
James:
So I raise a morphine toast to you. And, should you remember that it's the anniversary of my birth, remember that you were loved by me and you made my life a happy one. And there's no tragedy in that.
User Review
A bit more than a day at the seaside
Rating: 8/10
Third Star could almost be described as viewer reverse-engineered. Once
you've seen the ending, it's fairly easy not only to justify the tedium
of the rest of the film but to see meaning and relevance in material
that almost sent you despairing to the nearest emergency exit. Several
people even walked out in the press screening I attended, which is
unusual. If I had just gone out for a nice evening's entertainment, I'm
sure I would have headed off or even used my seat to grab a quick nap.
I'm relating this in case you find yourself in a similar dilemma: if
you do, my message is, DON'T LEAVE BEFORE THE END.
Four 30-something male friends set off for a remote area of Wales. One
of them, James, is seriously ill with cancer. His mates are taking him
for a holiday send-off in his favourite part of the world. External
events soon make it plain they have bitten off more than they can chew.
They have to surmount their insecurities to come clean and build a
deeper level of trust based on total honesty. But that is only the
start . . .
This is a film dedicated to the iPod generation. The society of
urbanites who are more concerned with whether their iPhone will sync
across several platforms than matters of life and death or even whether
relationships need to be ideal when most people can, after all, "just
settle for something that will do" and so let them get on with the
day-to-day business of 'life.' Perhaps some people can relate better
than I can to the bulk of this movie (some people did chuckle at the
occasional humour). I love the beautiful opening, with the air blowing
through the grass, the seawater, the fire of birthday candles flaming
and then being extinguished. From thereon it seemed all horribly
downhill until the end scenes – which, in total contrast, practically
induce a state of shock.
Characters are routinely introduced, their backstories rather
artificially introduced into the dialogue. They go off on their rather
boring adventure, have boring little interludes such as a village fete
turning into a brawl, and a meeting with a daft beachcomber searching
for washed-up Daath Vader memorabilia. Of his parents, James says,
"Sickness may be mine but the tragedy is theirs." And mine too, I
think, for sitting through this stuff. Hair-pulling inanities abound in
the trivial conversation. How can intelligent men mouth off such
superficial rubbish? I allow myself to be distracted by the nice (if
totally unoriginal) sunset photography. Halfway through, as a further
treat for sitting there that long, I let my mind dwell on the most
fascinating thing so far, a ferry price list that says, "Ferry £3.
Return £6.50." This occupies me long enough to get through the next
round of male hissy fits as they argue over individually failing lives.
Another bit of pleasantly contrived photography comes up as they get to
their destination – dancing and splashing in the sea, sunlight
reflecting and sparkling (whoopee) classically off the water. Sound and
vision is generally faultless, I should mention, and there's some good
incidental music. What a waste (or so I thought).
Then the plotwinder kicks in with a vengeance. Dilemmas presented with
frighteningly diminishing time-scales. Third Star is here fulfilling a
major practical use of narrative art: making us ask, what would I do in
such a situation? Any preliminary conclusions are rapidly challenged,
as events shift the goal posts. Superficiality in the long lead-up
becomes both a necessary factor for the denouement catching us
off-guard; as well as providing commentary on how we push important
questions aside for another day that (we think) never comes.
Third Star was shot in Wales on a budget of £450,000 using Super 16.
Talented director Hattie Dalton and deviously clever scriptwriter
Vaughan Sivell have, by accident or design, done annoyingly well. If
you find yourself in a cinema watching their film, I advise you to
either enjoy it or sit through it until the end. DON'T give up. Like
James, 'feel the fight' in yourself one last time. You know it'll be
worth it.
I am reminded of another excellent movie from a totally different genre
that succeeded in misleading audiences just as as well as this one.
Horror fans will recall Audition, an apparently laid-back, low-budget
Asian effort. It lulled me into a sense of being able to handle with
one eye shut anything such patently 'struggling filmmakers' might come
up with. Only to revise my opinions with large helpings of humble pie
that stuck firmly in my throat. I can't quite put Third Star in that
category, but it is a damn clever movie. Even the less-than-shattering
revelations mid-film, retrospectively become like the car backfiring in
a noir movie (heralding a gun going off) or a door slamming in a
slasher movie (heralding a bigger fright to come). But Third Star's
issues are not from other-worldy fiction: they are a commentary on how
we live, and how we routinely refuse to communicate on deep levels
until almost too late.
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