The Mercy review: Colin Firth’s yacht adventure tale lands in the drink

Sometimes taking a trip is in itself a trip.

In this beautifully lit biopic it’s 1967 and Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth) is a straitlaced husband and father of three based in Devon trying to flog one of his nautical inventions. Months later, having embarked on a competition to sail around the world (on his own, without stopping), the amateur sailor is wearing a dazed expression and a cloak of seaweed. Trying to describe himself, he opts for “cosmic being”. Far out.

The real Crowhurst was a complex and ultimately tragic character. A cunning naif, he’s as famous for being a cheat (he exploited the fact that the race was self-regulated) as for his eventual disappearance (to this day his body has never been found).

Firth laps up the ambiguity, expertly conveying the mess — the brilliant mess — inside Crowhurst’s head. Firth slyly suggests that Crowhurst was a gambler in search of an audience, self-conscious to the core. In that sense, even at sea and faced with a string of disasters, the man was never really alone. Which makes potentially silly lines (“Oh good God, not the buoyancy bag!”) poignant. Meanwhile, Firth’s appearance has rarely been so protean. Setbacks wither Crowhurst, yet, when sprawled on deck, he’s as taut as Tom Ripley.

In a telling flashback we see him just before the voyage with his dodgy PR Rodney (David Thewlis, hilarious). “You’re looking rugged,” drawls Rodney, before adding, after a perfect pause, “dashing, even.” He’s mocking Crowhurst but you sense he’s also genuinely jealous (Rodney’s hair sits in an aggressively sad clump, he’s dinginess personified). All the men in this movie “live in the shadow of other men”. And it’s their preoccupation with heroism that makes them willing to behave badly.

If only scriptwriter Scott Z Burns allowed the female characters to be as nuanced. Crowhurst’s wife Clare (poor Rachel Weisz) is every inch the graceful, chipper stalwart Brit. (Next to her, the mother in the Peter and Jane books looks like a strumpet.) Clare feels not one iota of resentment towards her husband. She blames his fate on the media, telling a bunch of hacks that they peddle clichés. How can we take this rousing speech seriously, given that Clare herself is a cliché?

Director James Marsh wants to explore our nation’s often harmful obsession with lovable losers and the bulldog spirit. With great courage, and no small amount of skill, he attempts to save us from the sinking ships of hubris and delusion. Alas, there’s a hole in his bucket. When Clare’s on screen, everything gets wet.