The Finest Hours

Inspired by actual events, The Finest Hours follows Chris Pine’s Bernie Webber as he and three fellow members of the Coast Guard embark on a perilous quest to rescue the crew of a damaged oil tanker – with the movie also detailing the efforts of said crew to stay afloat until help arrives. It’s ultimately clear that The Finest Hours is at its best in its relatively propulsive first half, as director Craig Gillespie, working from a script by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson, does a nice job of establishing the central characters and the dangerous circumstances in which they find themselves – with the screenplay, which also emphasizes the ongoing exploits of Bernie’s girlfriend (Holliday Grainger’s Miriam), generally juggling the various narrative threads to seamless effect. There’s little doubt, however, that the movie begins to palpably run out of steam as it enters its overlong, padded-out, and repetitive midsection, with Gillespie’s difficulties in developing the story’s periphery figures, coupled with an atmosphere of unrelenting darkness, ensuring that it becomes more and more difficult to both sympathize with the protagonists and discern just what’s going on. (This is to say nothing of the sometimes impenetrable accents, which are often drowned out by Carter Burwell’s aggressive score.) By the time the fairly interminable post-rescue stretch rolls around, The Finest Hours has essentially squandered the goodwill afforded by its decent opening stretch and confirmed its place as a sporadically engaging yet hopelessly uneven true-life tale.

** out of ****