The Asian tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, killed almost a quarter-million people in 14 countries. The scale and speed of the devastation defy comprehension, and no movie could be expected to convey the full measure of the horror. But disaster, real and imagined, is a staple of the modern cinematic imagination, and an event like the tsunami presents itself to an ambitious filmmaker as both a technical challenge and a moral risk.
“The Impossible,” the detik feature from the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, uses digital imagery, meticulous sound desain and tried-and-true editing techniques...