The rescue boat for a sinking ocean liner ends
up without a compass during the mission, and most of the audience could use a
similar guide in order to understand what is going on in The Finest Hours.
Perhaps those with a Boston/New England accent will comprehend more, but
unless they are familiar with nautical terms and have sharp ears for dialog
over the cacophony of special effects sounds, I think they too will be
mystified at least part of the time.
We get acquainted right away with Bernie Webber
(Pine) and his friend Richard Livesay (Foster) as members of the Coast Guard in
Massachusetts. They’re easygoing
and likeable, and Bernie has a reputation for going by the book. He finds it easy to be polite and
respectful of his elders and his superior, Captain Daniel Cluff (Bana), a man
not well respected by the Coast Guard crew, who doubt his judgment.
This is exemplified by his order for Webber to
put together at great risk a rescue team on a 36-foot boat when a brutal
nor’easter strikes and oilers at sea are sinking, one in particular being the
Pendleton. Chief Engineer Ray
Sybert (Affleck) is on that ship, and since all the commanding officers were on
the part of the ship broken off by hurricane strength winds and stormy seas,
his knowledge of sailing makes him the effective leader.
The
Finest Hours is based on a true story written down by Michael Tougias and
Casey Sherman in a book with the same title. Even a small sample of their clearly written prose pulls the
reader in immediately and sustains his/her attention. The movie, The Finest
Hours suffers from the screenwriters (Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric
Johnson) and Director Craig Gillespie not realizing that a naïve audience is
not going to understand the technical terms that are indistinctly shouted out,
even if they could hear them over the din of the rushing sea, howling winds,
clanking of huge chains, and motor sounds. We do get some of the heroics of the Webber and Sybert
characters—remarkable with the Doubting Thomases surrounding them—but not to
the extent that makes it clear what is happening in a scene. Inserting some explanations along the
way—perhaps voiced by other characters—would have been helpful.
Instead, the script calls for the insertion of
a rather silly love story with the female character clearly being drawn from
male concepts of what a “strong” woman would do (e.g., propose to a man, think
that she could cheekily appeal to a captain on an emotional basis, and then flounce off in a huff, leaving her coat and gloves behind during a winter
storm!). Of course, this character
(unfortunately for the actress, Holliday Grainger) ends up being rather
unlikeable.
The
Finest Hours is in 3D, but I couldn’t see that it made that much of a
difference. Carter Burwell’s music
and Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography do elevate the presentation of this
film.
A film primarily for northeastern sea
lovers; for the rest of us, it’s mainly continuous howling winds and stormy
seas.
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