Norman Rockwell in finest CGI storm
Print Edition
WAVES of water and nostalgia wash over the drenched and drippy “The Finest Hours,” a Norman Rockwell painting tossed into stormy CGI seas.
The disaster drama, directed by Craig Gillespie, is a movie of curious contrasts: an unabashedly old-fashioned and overwhelmingly vanilla tale of awe-shucks-ing, double-dating 1950s seamen, told with the modern 3D effects of your average end-of-the-world movie.
It’s about the 1952 rescue mission — a true story — of a four-man boat of Coast Guardsmen sent from Cape Cod to save the crew of the USS Pendleton, an oil tanker that a brutal winter storm has broken in half off the coast of Nantucket.
“The Finest Hours” provides more working-class New Englanders bobbing in churning nor’easter currents for those who have been patiently waiting for another wave to catch since 2000’s “The Perfect Storm.” Here again is that formula of maritime adventure and Massachusetts accents.
This one has an Affleck. Playing the assistant engineer Ray Sybert on the Pendleton is Casey Affleck, who moodily skulks over pipes and valves in the engine room for much of the film. More knowing than his fellow shipmen, he attempts to convince them how to steer what’s left of the tanker to safety.
On land is Chris Pine’s Bernie Webber, a timid, do-gooding guardsman. The setting could hardly be more innocent; early scenes show Bernie’s courtship of the red-haired Miriam (Holliday Grainger): seeds of sentimentality to fuel the action to come.
It’s just when they’re making their wedding plans that the storm sets in, news of the tanker’s distress spreads and Eric Bana’s ill-informed commanding officer dispatches Bernie into the freezing surf to search for survivors. His most notable companion is a near-silent sailor played by the arresting Ben Foster, who appears to have made a bet to say as few words as possible throughout the film. The central foe to the rescue is the crushing waves at the sand bar that Bernie must miraculously navigate.
Parallels between Bernie and Ray mount as the film toggles between them; both are intelligent workers thrown into impossible situations by foolhardy supervisors. With wet bangs and determined faces, they brave the storm with ingenuity, gritting their way through sheets of cold rain.
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