“A friend of mine emailed me a few days ago to see if she could tag along for my weekend movies. I warned her that January doesn’t really have the best selection, but she was certainly welcome to join me. My hesitant first choice movies were The Finest Hours and Kung Fu Panda 3. The combo turned out to be a surprising win.
Besides the Jan graveyard release date, I think my hesitation towards The Finest Hours came mostly because it was another A-list Chris leading a big epic movie on a boat. After the disappointment of In The Heart of the Sea, I really wasn’t too keen to go through that again. For all their surface similarities, the two couldn’t have been more different.
The Finest Hours tells the true story of the most daring rescue in US Coast Guard history. A big storm in the 50’s wreaks havoc on the boats at sea, including tearing two tankers in half. When all the nearby resources are pursuing the first, a smaller crew is sent on a bit of a Hail Mary rescue mission for the other. Chris Pine stars as Bernie Webber, leader of that courageous crew of 4. Casey Affleck is the reluctant leader of the survivors of the tanker waiting for rescue.
I’d recently been thinking that we hadn’t seen anything from Ben Foster lately, a favorite I’ve followed since his days on Flash Foward when I was in junior high. On the way to the theater, I noticed a poster for the movie that highlighted him among the cast. Yay! (PS-If you want to see something incredible from him, check out The Messenger, where he plays a military man whose job is to inform next of kin when their loved ones pass). I also noticed that the ad said the film was done by Disney. It seemed an odd pairing at first, but after watching, it made total sense.
See, here’s the thing. The movie is mostly being marketed as either an adventurous action movie or a historical drama. I found it to be more like the inspirational family fare I grew up with in the 90s, most of them by Disney. It’s an underdog story about a team of real life heroes and their bravery, and it connected on so many emotional levels. And everything on the film from the cast to the effects was top notch, iffy Boston accents aside. Very inspiring film and a nice change of pace from the dark and intense movies I tend to favor
The Finest Hours – \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/”