Movie Review—The Finest Hours

The Finest Hours

by Peter J. O’Connell

The Finest Hours. Released: Jan. 2016. Runtime: 117 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of peril.

Britain’s “finest hour,” according to Winston Churchill, was the Royal Air Force’s heroic, eventually victorious, struggle in the skies against Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the grim summer of 1940. Some have called a heroic mass rescue effort on stormy seas in the fierce winter of 1952 the U.S. Coast Guard’s “finest hours.” Now a film with that sobriquet as its title has made it to local screens.

The Finest Hours, directed by Craig Gillespie, has three interweaving plot lines. One involves the desperate efforts to keep the stern half of an oil tanker afloat after the ship splits in two during the nor’easter off New England in February 1952. The bow half of the ship sinks, costing many lives, including that of the captain. Engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) takes charge of the stern half and devises a plan to keep that half afloat until a rescue boat can arrive from the Coast Guard station in the small town of Chatham on Cape Cod.

At the Coast Guard station, the commanding officer, Dan Cluff (Eric Bana), dispatches young Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), assisted by Dick Livesey (Ben Foster) and two other men, in a small craft to attempt to rescue the men on the tanker half. By this time the storm has become truly hellacious, with waves as high as 70 feet. Furthermore, Bernie is plagued by self-doubts stemming from his failure to succeed in a rescue attempt several months earlier. Dick Livesey, however, a seasoned salt, provides Bernie with much needed skill and support. That skill and support—and more—are needed, for the Coast Guard craft has a stated capacity far fewer than the number of survivors on the tanker, and, to add to the nightmarish situation, the Coast Guard craft has lost its compass, which seems an obvious necessity for getting back to shore.

The movie’s third plot line involves the efforts of Miriam Pentinnen (Holliday Grainger), Bernie’s fiancée, first to persuade Dan Cluff to call back Bernie’s boat—she is unsuccessful—and then to develop a plan to assist with the rescue attempt from shore.

The Finest Hours has many fine moments in it. The CGI (computer-generated imagery) of the storm and the ships is gasp-inducing but not (too) unrealistic. The score by Carter Burwell is also excellent, stirring without being bombastic a la John Williams. As far as the acting goes, Casey Affleck’s performance is as laserlike in its intensity as his character’s focus is in Ray Sybert’s efforts to keep the tanker half afloat.

Unfortunately, the film’s overall effect is weakened by the performances of: Pine, who seems more constipated than conflicted; Bana, who, as a Southerner in command of a New England post in a crisis, is supposed to be a somewhat confused character but actually comes across as an actor confused about how to portray his character; and Grainger, who seems more of a flibbertigibbet than a heroine.

Nonetheless, the CGI, the score, and Affleck’s performance make the movie well worth seeing and a well-deserved tribute to one of America’s services that does not get as much attention as it should for its efforts to provide protection for humans and nature along thousands of miles of coastline, in all kinds of conditions.

“Footnote” to the film: A number of films released in recent months seem, as it were, to pair up because of overarching themes that connect them. For example, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and The Finest Hours both celebrate patriotism and heroism in a crisis. And The Finest Hours and In the Heart of the Sea are fact-based maritime tales.