Review of The Finest Hours (2016) by Dottheeyes — 29 Jan 2016

The Finest Hours is a Disney-produced dramatization of a 1952 nor'easter which split two large ships in half. In the face of near certain failure and death, four outmatched New England Coast Guard sailors (one played by Chris Pine) set out in a small boat to rescue one group of survivors.

The film plays the expected notes—the burden of decency, the ferocity of the sea, tidy nostalgia for the Greatest Generation—and the third act has enough reassuring half nods (of the you-did-a-damn-fine-job variety) to precipitate the on-set chiropractor's own finest hour, but almost every platitude and dose of syrup is countered by a competent performance and a vertiginous technical flourish, including a series of shots assembled to simulate a single camera move, tracing a piece of information from a ship's rain-and-wind-swept top level to its rapidly flooding interior.