This film will give you and your family two of the finest hours you'll spend in a theater this year.

Rating: 8/10 (30 January 2016)

Coasties get no respect. At least, not as much as soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines get. Even the word may sound derogatory to an outsider, but coastie is actually the most widely accepted term for Coast Guardsmen. Less complimentary terms include the "Navy National Guard", "the Navy's little sister" and "puddle pirates". See? No respect. Even though the roots of the U.S. Coast Guard go back to 1790 and its current missions make it as valuable in peacetime as in wartime, and its focus is jobs that none of the other armed services undertake regularly (if at all), few people know much about coasties. I blame the movies. There aren't very many Coast Guard movies out there. 2006's "The Guardian" is the only one I could think of before 2016's "The Finest Hours" (PG-13, 1:57), which really is an "incredible true story"! In this film, Chris Pine takes a break from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise to captain a much smaller ship, but one in no less danger than his ship in the "Star Trek" movies. Pine plays Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernard Webber, stationed in Chatham, Massachusetts in the early 1950s. As a coastie, he's very capable, but meek. As a man, he's handsome, but shy. Nevertheless, Bernie rises to any occasion when presented with a challenge. He wins the heart of a pretty and assertive local girl named Miriam (Holliday Grainger) and soon they're engaged. On the day that Bernie plans to officially notify his commanding officer (Eric Bana) that he's getting married, he gets sent out into a nor'easter to rescue about three dozen merchant mariners whose ship was one of two disabled in this especially severe winter storm.
The ship in question is the oil tanker, SS Pendleton. Due to a series of unfortunate events so bad that they'd make Lemony Snicket shudder, Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck), the Pendleton's engineer, ends up leading the efforts of the crew in trying to notify someone of the ship's location and keeping it afloat long enough for the men to be rescued. Ray has to contend with the ship's greatly diminished capabilities, the rising water inside the ship and the members of the crew who strongly disagree on the best course of action. Fortunately, Ray has on his side Seaman Wallace Quirey (John Ortiz), the ship's jovial and hulking cook (Abraham Benrubi) and an old salt named Frank Fauteux (Graham McTavish), but their loyalty only helps so much – especially in this weather! As the men on the Pendleton are fighting for survival, Bernie is fighting to get to them in time, and Miriam is doing what she can from the shore. Bernie can only find three other men to accompany him on what some openly call "a suicide mission". Without telling Miriam that he's going, he sets out with Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), Engineman Third Class Andrew Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Seaman Ervin Maske (John Magaro) on a motorized lifeboat meant to hold no more than 12 men. How these four men in this small boat are going to make it through this storm over a major sand bar, find the Pendleton and rescue up to 41 men are the serious problems facing Boatswain Bernard Webber's crew.
"The Finest Hours", based on the book of the same name, and as produced by Walt Disney Pictures, is an excellent, if not completely accurate tale of heroism. First of all, you're struck with how incomprehensibly gutsy simply undertaking this rescue mission was for Webber and his crew – and how utterly hopeless the situation seemed for Sybert and his seafaring comrades. It's simply great storytelling. Part of the story's effectiveness lies with the important role Miriam and her impending marriage to Bernie play in the story. Although Bernie and Miriam did marry in real life, much about their relationship and her role in the events portrayed has been fabricated for dramatic purposes. It feels like unnecessary embellishment of an already dramatic story.
The acting is one of this film's additional strengths. I feel that this was one of Casey Affleck's best roles and finest performances to date. Pine is very good, but having him play a good-looking guy who is insecure about his looks seemed a little silly. The rest of the cast is solid, as is the directing of the little-known but versatile Craig Gillespie, and the quality of the writing in this adaptation by Eric Johnson, Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy. The gale-force visual effects are the best this side of 2000's "The Perfect Storm", while the 3D, and, if you have access to them, D-Box seats, really enhance the experience. This film tells a relatively simple story and feels a little old fashioned, but that's part of its charm. Come to think of it, with its complete absence of sexual content or mano-a-mano violence and its light use of adult language, "The Finest Hours" also works very well as a family film. This movie will give you two of the finest hours that you and/or your family are likely to have watching a movie this year. "A-"