Review: THE FINEST HOURS

THE FINEST HOURS  (DISASTER-THRILLER/DRAMA) 

2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Holliday Grainger, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, John Oritz, Graham McTavish, Kyle Gallner, John Magaro, Michael Raymond-James, Abraham Benrubi
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of peril.
117 minutes
Verdict: A more earnest than interesting disaster-at-sea thriller, THE FINEST HOURS is an ordinary rendition of extraordinary events, but may be perfectly satisfying for fans of the "Disney dad movie".
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE FINEST HOURS IF YOU LIKED:
THE GUARDIAN  (2006)
THE PERFECT STORM  (2000)
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA  (2015)
MCFARLAND, USA  (2015)
WHITE SQUALL  (1996)
 
Disney has become weirdly specific in their movie output during the last 15 years, with all but a few exceptions falling into one of three distinct categories: blockbusters (big $150-$200 million tentpole action/adventure movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, THE LONE RANGER, TRON: LEGACY, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and anything through Marvel or Lucasfilm), animation (Walt Disney Animation or Pixar, i.e. FROZEN, INSIDE OUT, BIG HERO 6) and the dad movie.  What's a dad movie, you ask?  They're almost all sports dramas, with 2000's REMEMBER THE TITANS probably where the formula started, often carried on with a culture clash element in movies like GLORY ROAD, MILLION DOLLAR ARM, and last year's MCFARLAND, USA.  Most of them are sports dramas, but they don't have to be.  The most crucial ingredients to the Disney dad movie are a marketable star (household name, but usually no one too hot at the moment, i.e. Kevin Costner, Paul Walker, Jon Hamm), a true story of "overcoming the odds", an overall male perspective (not like Michael Bay machismo, but a working family man sort of thing), and an experienced but generally low-profile journeyman director.  THE FINEST HOURS is a Disney dad movie, and not the first from director Craig Gillespie, who made MILLION DOLLAR ARM, but it's a slightly different Disney dad movie, not about sports, and a lot bigger, with a reported budget of $80 million.  It attempts to bridge the gap between the stoic nobility and truth-based heroism of the dad movie and the action spectacle of a blockbuster, but it's unmistakably a dad movie, through and through. 
It's star, Chris Pine, plays against his usually cocky, braggadocio type as a squeaky clean, by-the-book hero, Bernie Webber, a young but seasoned member of the U.S. Coast Guard, recently engaged to his slightly bolder girlfriend, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), when he's charged with leading a small boat rescue mission to pick up the stranded crew of the SS Pendleton, an oil tanker split in half by a ferocious winter storm off the coast of Cape Cod in 1952.
Casey Affleck stands in a similar position as Ray Sybert, the man to whom the duty falls to rally the men aboard the Pendleton to work together to survive long enough for help to arrive.  Affleck's and Pine's characters are too-good-to-be-true everymen who rely simply on force of will to overcome circumstance and pose stoically without offering much in the way of insight or ingenuity.  In this way, the film's extraordinary story feels slight and pedestrian, yet forcefully resolute in its simple track.
Like December's disaster-at-sea period drama, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, THE FINEST HOURS is happily old-fashioned, not particularly distracted by any moral complications or insights that arise, but also, weirdly stagey in its execution.  The Boston accents are thick, and the personalities are broad, and the extended CGI storm sequences have a rear-projection vibe.  It doesn't look terrible, but you'd never believe they're actually on the sea.  There's not much noteworthy about it to praise in particular, but it's not bad either.  It's fine, a movie very much for the older crowd, harmless, but unremarkable.  At two hours long (mercifully tight in comparison to some of the more recent, bloated would-be epics), with sturdy production values and likable-enough earnestness, it's 'good enough'.