Not good review:
Annette Bening and Jodie Foster float to the top of lackluster drama... clunky, tepid script... it's hard not to feel this would've played better as a true documentary...
Maureen Lee Lenker Sun, 3 September 2023 at 3:23 am AEST·4-min read Nyad, the true story of marathon swimmer Diana Nyad and her determination to swim from Cuba to Florida, has all the trappings of classic Oscar bait.
It marks the narrative debut of award-winning documentarians Jimmy Chen and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo, The Rescue) as they pivot from their nonfiction chronicles of extraordinary athletes to this dramatized biopic. Then there are its two stars — revered actresses Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, each turning in impressive work. But all that pedigree can't save Nyad from its clunky, tepid script.
Packed with archival footage from Nyad's first attempt at the swim when she was 28 and real coverage of her later efforts, it's hard not to feel this would've played better as a true documentary.
The film focuses on the older Nyad (Bening), who, at 60, decides to attempt the swim once more. She recruits her best friend Bonnie (Foster) to train her, and together they assemble a team that includes navigator John Bartlett (a careworn, gruffly lovable Rhys Ifans), scientist Angel Yanagihara (Jeena Yi), and shark expert Luke Tipple (Luke Cosgrove).
NYAD. (L-R) Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in NYAD NYAD. (L-R) Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in NYAD Kimberley French/Netflix Annette Bening and Jodie Foster in 'Nyad'
For Bening, Nyad is an undeniably juicy role, a spiky creature whose single-minded obsession with her destiny often expresses itself as brusque self-centeredness. Bening unsurprisingly put in the work, training in the pool for an entire year before filming. As Nyad, she gives a performance utterly devoid of vanity in her display of both Nyad's exacting personality and the grueling physical toll of her training and efforts. Bening insisted on filming the bulk of the swimming scenes herself — and she gives the film its stakes with every shot of her waterlogged face, cracking lips, and sunburnt eyelids.
But it is Foster who is the film's best asset,
