Slow-sailing 'Finest Hours' waterlogs fact-based sea survival tale
These "Hours" aren't the finest. Just the slowest.
Walt Disney's "The Finest Hours," Craig Gillespie's fact-based 3-D survival tale about a daring 1952 U.S. Coast Guard rescue mission off Massachusetts, runs just under two hours, but feels like three.
Scenes run on and on, begging to be trimmed so that this cinematic vessel can become one tight ship.
No such luck. The lengthy, banal setup for this should-be-riveting story remains waterlogged and sluggish until the Coast Guard goes into action and Javier Aguirresarobe's camerawork rescues the movie with impressively fluid, swooping camera shots.
Even so, Aguirresarobe's digital cinematography looks dreadfully washed out, contrast-challenged and downright unattractive.
In February of 1952, the oil tanker Pendleton splits in half during a nasty storm. The front section sinks, but the aft half remains afloat.
But for how long?
The surviving crew members, trapped with no radio communication, reluctantly turn to chief engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) for guidance. He's socially inept and disliked by his disaster movie stock-character peers, but he seems to know what to do and how to do it.
Meanwhile, back on the mainland, the new Coast Guard boss Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (a drawling Eric Bana) dispatches shy, champion rule-follower Bernie Webber (Chris Pine) to jump in a small, wooden 36-foot boat and go save the crew.
Bernie takes three volunteers: gruff Richard (Ben Foster), nondescript Andy (Kyle Gallner) and a Navy sailor (John Magaro) just visiting the Guard office.
Off they go into the wild, gray yonder to face 60-foot waves, hurricane winds, frigid temperatures and visibility so limited that the Guardsmen can only see one D out of 3.
"The Finest Hours" doesn't focus exclusively on the characters in life-or-death situations.
Instead, this screenplay (based on a book by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias), attempts to tell a love story as well, one that actually drags the movie to the bottom of the "see."
Quiet Bernie has been dating the ultra-cute Miriam (a spunky Holliday Grainger) for more than a year. And it feels like it, considering that "The Finest Hours" begins in 1951 when Bernie meets Miriam on a blind date, and we get to know about their relationship, and how she asked him to marry her, and how he almost blew it. OK. Enough.
No doubt Gillespie - director of the acclaimed "Lars and the Real Girl" - sought to avoid wasting Grainger in another thankless girl-he-left-behind role. He constantly cuts back to Miriam being curt with Cluff ("You don't know what you're doing!"), running her car off the road and appearing concerned for Bernie.
Yet, Miriam remains just another thankless girl-he-left-behind role. There's just more of her to slow the movie and interrupt the action.
Both Affleck and Pine shine in this soggy adventure, accented by Carter Burwell's score that bombards us with bombastic percussion.
Affleck assumingly takes command of the screen, as befits his character.
Pine, mostly known for alpha roles such as Captain James Kirk in the "Star Trek" reboot, reveals a genuine sweetness in Bernie's steely strength and his impressively attractive calm - both before and after the storm.
“The Finest Hours”
★ ★ ½
Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger, Eric Bana, Graham McTavish
Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for intense scenes. 117 minutes