The Finest Hours (2016) * *

Directed by:  Craig Gillespie

Starring:  Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Holliday Granger, Ben Foster, Eric Bana

Because "Disney" is plastered all over the trailers and opening credits of The Finest Hours, we know things will turn out ok with minimal muss and fuss.     The title also tips us off.    Based on true events, (take that with a grain of salt), The Finest Hours goes about its business decently enough.     It is well-made and the performances are good, but there isn't much of a sense of danger or suspense.     We wait for what seems like hours for the rescue boat piloted by Bernie Webber (Pine) to reach the stranded half of an oil tanker split apart by rough seas during a winter storm.     Once the small, small boat arrives and the survivors are gathered, the group makes it home on the overcrowded boat in a lot less time than it took to reach the wreckage.    

I am not revealing any spoilers by stating that there were survivors and that they were indeed rescued.    The trailers promised, "the most daring rescue mission in United States Coast Guard History."     It was daring, almost suicidal, with little chance of success.   Bernie, ever the company man, says, "They say we have to go out, they didn't say anything about coming back."     However, they won't do much good for the stranded if they die out on the hazardous seas.   

The Finest Hours begins with no Coast Guard business at all, but involving a double date where Bernie meets his future fiancée.     She is Miriam (Granger), a no-nonsense, go-getter telephone operator who takes matters into her own hands more than once in this movie.    She asks the hesitant Bernie to marry her a few months after they meet, which subjects him to ridicule among his co-workers.    Miriam is Determined, which we see in spades later on and frankly we grow weary of the act.     Bernie's commanding officer (Bana) asks her, not unreasonably, how she expects to be a wife of a Coast Guard officer when she freaks out, storms the base, and demands that Bernie be returned home.    She is stumped for an answer.    I wonder how she handled future missions.

The bulk of The Finest Hours takes place one dark and very stormy night in February 1952 off the coast of Massachusetts.     An oil tanker is split in half by colossal, powerful tidal waves as a winter storm pounds the coast.     The visuals here are very convincing as we see half of the massive tanker torn away and sink.     The other half of the tanker still miraculously floats.  Engineer Ray Sybert (Affleck) decides to manually steer the remains of the boat into shallow waters and ground it in order to buy time for a rescue.    This has to be done before the water fills up and sinks the boat in the open sea.     

Bernie's boat is so small even the rats aboard would be hunchback (rim shot).     The Orca from Jaws would be a size upgrade from this boat.     It is not even certain the boat can survive navigating past a sandbar, but Bernie does somehow.    That I can believe.    What I can't believe is that no one in either the tanker or the small boat develops hypothermia with the rain pounding on them or standing waist-deep in rising sea water.    It is explained in radio broadcasts that men on the tanker died from hypothermia, but it is never seen.     The men on the tankers run around in short sleeved t-shirts while the Coast Guard guys wear slickers and drenched wool hats.   

I liked the performances of Pine and Affleck, playing two otherwise unassertive men who rise to the occasion just when their crews need them the most.     The tanker crew has one of those annoying movie characters whose sole job is to consistently question Sybert's plan and tell him he's wrong.     He does nothing to help the cause except to doubt that the plan will work.     As if Sybert didn't have enough on his plate, he now has to prove this jerk wrong at every turn as well.    The crew should have pushed this man overboard accidentally on purpose.