Movie Review: The Finest Hours
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
February of 1952 brought about an epic winter storm off the coast of Cape Cod, the Coast Guard made one of history’s bravest attempts at rescuing a split in half oil tanker (one of two ships demolished that evening). The new film, The Finest Hours is the account of those events.
I had very high hopes for this film, based on true events. The Finest Hours having a wonderful cast, Chris Pine plays lead as Bernie Webber, the shy, insecure Coast Guard captain with a failed history of rescue attempts. Then there is Holiday Granger who plays Webber’s love interest Miriam, the beautiful, bold, aggressive 
woman that is bound and determined to get what she wants. The cast also includes, Casey Affleck in the integral role of Ray Sybert, the sinking ship’s operations manager.
We are taken through the events and unfortunately the 117-minute film seemed to go on much longer than that. I think it could be best described as having too many lingering scenes, the kind of scenes that were probably intended to become classics, but alas did not produce. A big disappointment for me is when you aren’t invested in the lead characters romance. Unfortunately, you just didn’t feel the love. Don’t get me wrong, the film wasn’t a total disaster, it just never came together and frankly had every opportunity to become epic. Even Eric Bana, who played Daniel Cluff, the Coast Guard commander fell short.
What did go well was the cinematography. Enough can’t be said for the absolutely incredible scenes of a very angry sea, with mammoth, extremely daunting seventy foot waves. The amazing demolition of the oil tanker, split in half and the anticipation for its demise. When Bernie and his crew of three head out to try and save the tankers crew of over thirty souls, their lifeboat has to get past what they call the “Bar.” It’s an area where the tides are going every which way and are nearly impossible to get past. This was definitely extraordinary footage of this phenomenon.
Another very interesting, yet subtle positive from The Finest Hours was the masterful way the Disney film had absolutely no swearing, nothing that could be considered vulgar or inappropriate. I honestly have not experienced this in a film in a very long time. As they say, “It was refreshing.”
Betsy Cizek
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