Nominated for a best foreign-language Oscar two years ago but only now making it on to British screens, Kon-Tiki isn’t a bad choice for those seeking an alternative form of entertainment this festive season, the sort of thing grandparents and pre-teens with long attention spans might enjoy together. A resolutely conventional tale of derring-do, it dramatises how Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) sailed from Peru to Polynesia on a raft in 1947 in order to prove it was possible that the first peoples of Oceania might have come from the west not Asia as was widely assumed. It’s intrinsically rousing stuff, although the journey is a little low on drama apart from the odd shark attack and a bit of bickering between Heyerdahl and his virtually indistinguishable crew of blond men with beards. A token effort is made to flesh out the hero’s relationship with the wife (Agnes Kittelsen) he left behind, but in the end it’s Boys’ Own stuff all the way.
