This is a Mexican story. It is also a deep sea fishing story, a competition to bring in the biggest blue marlin. It is also a story about an orphanage. And, with the title focusing on miracle, the audience knows right from the start that there is going to be a happy ending. No suspense concerning who will win the competition – the suspense comes in how this will be achieved.
And, this is a true story, the blue miracle and all. In fact, as with so many films nowadays, there are photos of the actual characters, the fishing episode and the achievement during the final credits.
At the centre of the film is Jimmy Gonzalez as Omar, director of the orphanage, Casa Hogar (Home). It is noted that Jimmy Gonzalez himself had a rather tough upbringing as an orphan, involved with gangsters, drug dealing, a lookout for the gangs. But, with determination, he overcame his background and became an actor. He brings his own background to this story, made emotional by nightmare flashbacks to his character as a boy, fishing with his father, swept overboard, surviving, his father drowned.
Dennis Quaid has top billing. Here he is again as a crusty, very crusty, old man, veteran fisherman for 25 years in the town, winning the competition twice, but with an old boat, very few prospects – and his wife and son having left him to go back to Dallas.
There is quite a dramatic storm, flooding of the orphanage, but the organisers of the annual competition, the Bisbees (Bruce McGill and Dana Wheeler Nicholson) determine that the competition must go on and fees will be lifted. Sympathetic to the orphanage, less sympathetic to Wade, they insist that he take on Omar and some of the boys as the crew.
So, three days of competition, frustration in hooking seaweed, a second day and the possible victory but tension on the boat with two of the boys fighting and falling overboard, the temptation to cheat, conscience issues, and then the blue miracle.
There is quite some energy in the film, the kind of film that is called “inspirational”.
US, 2021, 95 minutes, Colour.
Dennis Quaid, Jimmy Gonzalez, Fernanda Urrejola, Bruce Mc Gill, Dana Wheeler- Nicholson, Miguel Angel Garcia, Isaac Arellanes, Nathan Arenas, Steve Gutierrez.
Directed by Julio Quintana.
Reviewed by Fr. Peter Malone, MSC
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