Excellent movie. Bring your life jacket.

Rating: 10/10 (16 February 2016)

This is a great movie. Tense story, excellent acting, lots of action and an upbeat theme. The movie keeps the audience engaged and entertains. Now one might write off this movie as being just the latest addition to the natural disaster movie genre but that would be only partially correct. There is little in the story that is contrived. That is, the story has plausibility. It does not seem to be stretching literary license (though some is taken). The heroics are not overblown. Actually, what is depicted is amazing and admirable. Coast Guardsmen conduct a rescue operation in almost impossibly abysmal conditions. Yet it happened. You can look it up. The movie does raise a question: why was the US Coast Guard so undermanned and poorly equipped? This movie gives cause to compare it to the blockbuster Titanic (1997). It compares favorably. Chris Pine and Casey Affleck are excellent as the two principal characters who are most responsible for saving a lot of lives. This movie is worth watching. Just make sure that you're wearing a life jacket.