The Finest Hours

Based on a true story this rescue mission against the odds is a ripping yarn and boasts the best performance from Chris Pine to date.

A million miles away from his brash, confident loudmouth of Star Trek. This Pine is an introverted, by-the-book Bernie Webber, a coast guard stationed near Cape Cod in 1952. He’s so unsure of himself in fact he’s afraid to finally meet potential sweetheart Miriam (Grainger) despite conducting a relationship over the phone for the past month. He certainly isn’t ready when she asks him to marry her and he definitely isn’t prepared to question Eric Bana’s unsure Mr Clough when he orders Pine to take a small crew on surely a suicide mission to search for survivors of an oil tanker that has been ripped in half in a terrible storm.

That tanker, which has lost its officers and has no means of contacting the shore, has been deliberately beached by chief engineer Ray Sybert (Affleck) in the hope of stabilising it and reducing the possibility of taking on more water. As the ship continues to break apart it’s a decision that’s questioned by the remaining crew …

We’re in The Perfect Storm territory here with director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Million Dollar Arm) doing his best to emulate Wolfgang Peterson’s awesome squall scenes. However, it’s not the visuals – the night scenes impaired by the 3D darkening - but the sound of the deafening waves that crash onto Pine’s tiny lifeboat that stick in the memory

As does the lack of expected manliness. The Finest Hours has all the earmarks of a classic 1950s boat movie but Webber and Sybert are no Robert Mitchum or John Wayne or Burt Lancaster types: they are unsure, lacking confidence, and who admit more than once to being scared. That’s a welcome slant but it’s hard then to make of the journey of self-discovery that Pine’s Bernie embarks on, a journey that leads to traditional forms of masculinity: heroism, self-sacrifice and operating just outside the regulations to get the job done.

Where Finest Hours tries too hard is shoehorning Holliday Grainger (The Borgais, Cinderella) into the mix. Despite coming across as a strong woman (she wears a ‘bear coat’ and refuses to be talked down to by the men around her) but she simply has nothing to do but wander about the town looking worried and occasionally ploughing her car into the snow. It’s odd Gillespie chose her to beef out when Rachael Brosnahan has more backstory and depth: a mother of two who lost her husband in the previous storm, Brosnahan is caught between anger with this unforgiving life and an acceptance of it.

Predictable it might be but it is engaging from the first minute to the last.