Open Water 2: Adrift

 

An open water adventure holiday gone horribly wrong. Open Water 2: Adrift is projected as based on true events, but with the kind of human stupidity depicted in the movie, i doubt if humans can be so stupid. Three pairs of couples go on a yatch holiday out in the open sea or ocean, far away from shore. One couple has an infant daughter also on board, which itself was a risky thing to take such a young one on a ship or a yatch cruise. Four of the members jump into the water to do a swim which i thought was another stupid thing to do, who swims in open ocean far away from land, maybe some do perhaps. Of the remaining, Amy (Susan May Pratt) has a phobia for water because of an incident in her childhood when her father drowned while swimming with her. The other guy Dan (Eric Dane) is ostensibly the owner of the yatch, but later reveals that he is a fraud and that the yatch is actually belonging to his boss. What kind of a boss allows his employee to take his yatch out to a cruise, beats me. Anyway, both of them also jump into the water, without realising that nobody has bothered to put the ladder down or keep the hatch down so that people can climb back. Dan is such an idiot that he does not realise the blunder he has committed endangering everybody's lives. All of them are stuck down in the water with nary any hold or groove to climb back. Soon one after another start drowning. The movie advertised shark attack, but there was nothing of that sort, even though blood oozed from a couple of the guys. 

The Liberators

The Liberators by James Pattinson, is a story of a revolution gone wrong. Harvey London is famous for doing odd jobs which require much skill and daring. In one such job, he is left bloodies and penniless when he is offered a job to transport a revolutionary leader to the coast of Anagua, a fictional country in Latin America bordering the Caribbean. He is a accompanied by Pete, a tough young man. They have to face hurricane winds and rains while on the way, lose their boat, get into a dinghy which also capsizes, but miraculously survive to find themselves on the shore of Anagua but in hostile territory. There one girl Anita helps them to navigate through rough country with hunger, starvation, deprivation, fight with enemies pulling them through in a city Oxaca which unfortunately is denuded by a volcano and earthquake. The conquistadors move to another town but spies within their network wreck their supplies of arms & ammunition which was essential to their hopes of winning the war. After untold misery and fight, these three people find themselves at the gate of the revolution, when the unexpected happens. The narrative by James Pattinson is nice, it is quite fast flowing, though some words used are quite archaic. Goodreads 4/5

James Pattinson (1915-2009) was a prolific British author with more than 100 thrillers to his name.