Movie Breakdown: The Finest Hours

Pre-Screening Stance:

All I know about The Finest Hours is that there’s a part in the trailer where Chris Pine yells “NOT ON MY WATCH!” and it makes me laugh out loud every single time I see it.  I sincerely hope the line carries the same level of comedic impact in the actual movie.

Post-Screening Ramble:

The Finest Hours is not a good film.  It’s based on a neat true story – back in 1952 a small Coast Guard team embarked on a suicide mission to rescue sailors stranded on a busted oil tanker – but “based on” is about all there is to it.  There’s an unnecessary love component and you get to briefly see what the SS Pendleton’s crew went through while waiting to be saved, but mostly it’s just Chris Pine driving a boat over and under waves and lots of people endlessly talking about how they don’t expect the Coast-Guard-crew-that-could to live, much less save even a single sailor.  Then guess what happens?  You know what happens, and therein lies the main problem with The Finest Hours – it’s too much of a bore to allows its obvious ending to be something great.  What a shame.

Aside from a lackluster presentation of its “incredible” true story, the film also features some bizarre performances.  Chris Pine plays his guy, Bernie, as a light version of Forrest Gump, and I’m still not sure if he was supposed to be kind of special or just shy.  I believe Casey Affleck may have been going for a poor man’s “rebel without a cause” kind of thing for his character, Ray, but who knows.  There’s also a chunky Ben Foster who mostly grins and makes weird eyes at people.  The worse though is Eric Bana, who has some kind of half Texas, half Boston accent that’s one of the worst things of all-time.  Oof.

Skip The Finest Hours.  Duh.

One Last Thought:

My screening of The Finest Hours was in 3D, but I don’t actually remember seeing anything that was 3D.  Am I just used to the effect now?  Or was the film not actually in 3D?  I’ll never know, I suppose.