The Finest Hours

Watching Disney’s The Finest Hours inside a theater with chilling AC is almost a 4D experience. The movie happens mostly in the darkness and seeing all these mid sea rescue operations on the big screen will definitely increase your fear about sea especially in the night. As a cinema, it doesn’t have a completely inspiring feel to it, but the visual grandeur of the whole event will surely keep you engrossed and tensed.

Bernie Webber of the Chatham Coast guard is the main protagonist of the movie. He has decided to marry his girl friend Miriam. But before marriage he gets the charge of rescuing the men stuck in a tanker ship that got rattled in the middle of the sea. The movie basically tells us the unbelievable attempt of the Coast guard to save the men and also the remarkable things done by the men inside the ship to stay alive.

Unlike the other based on true story classics, this one from Craig Gillespie won’t really inspire you to be the hero by taking some risk. The writing doesn’t have that motivational shade to it. But it is actually the visualization of the whole event that creates an impact. There are many visual effects sequences of the boat and the ship in the violent sea, which when you see inside a cinema hall looks terrifying. Even when the movie approaches its climax and you see the men getting down to the life boat, it is really a tense situation.

Chris Pine was fine as the central protagonist Bernie. Holliday Grainger looks pretty and acts convincingly as the caring and concerned girlfriend Miriam. The guy who actually impressed me in the cast was Casey Affleck who made the character of Ray Sybert look rough and at the same time focused about the task.

The director has mainly focused on giving us a better picture on the daunting task that was ahead of the men. As I said, the script isn’t trying to interpret or convey any inspiring thoughts through the movie. They have definitely succeeded in giving a grand visual support to the incident.

On the whole The Finest Hours has pretty intense visuals and by the time you finish watching the movie inside a theater, it is almost like going in to a violent sea at night. It is a watchable film with a commendable amount of quality visual effects.