Film review: The Finest Hours is a no-frills celebration of heroism and human spirit

Starring Casey Affleck and Chris Pine, this is your average end-of-the-world movie.

From left, Eric Bana, Chris Pine and Kyle Gallner in The Finest Hours. Claire Folger / Disney via AP Photo

Associated Press

The Finest Hours

Director: Craig Gillespie

Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger, Eric Bana

Three stars

Waves of water and nostalgia wash over the drenched and drippy The Finest Hours, a Norman Rockwell painting tossed into stormy CGI seas.

The disaster drama, directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Million Dollar Arm), is a movie of curious contrasts: an unabashedly old-fashioned and overwhelmingly vanilla tale of aw-shucks, double-­dating 1950s seamen, told with the modern 3-D effects of your average end-of-the-world movie.

It is based on the true story of a 1952 mission by a four-man team of coastguards, who are sent from Cape Cod to save the crew of the USS Pendleton, an oil tanker that a brutal storm has broken in half off the coast of Nantucket.

The film provides more working-class New Englanders struggling to survive in churning nor'easter currents, for those who have been patiently waiting since 2000's The Perfect Storm.

Here, again, is that formula of maritime adventure and Massachusetts accents (some believable, some that sink).

Casey Affleck plays Ray Sybert, the assistant engineer on the Pendleton, who moodily skulks over pipes and valves in the engine room for much of the film. More aware of what is going on than his fellowshipmen, he is the one who attempts to convince them how to steer what’s left of the tanker to ­safety.

On land, we meet Bernie Webber (Star Trek's Chris Pine), who is a timid, do-gooding coastguard stationed in Chatham. The setting could hardly be any more innocent –the early scenes show Bernie's courtship of Miriam (a radiant Holliday Grainger), which provides the seeds of sentimentality to fuel the action to come.

Just as they start to make their wedding plans, the storm sets in, news of the tanker’s distress spreads and an ill-­informed commanding officer (Eric Bana) dispatches Bernie and his crewmates into the freezing surf to search for survivors. His most notable companion is a near-silent sailor played by the arresting Ben Foster, who appears to have made a bet to say as few words as possible throughout the film.

The central barrier to the rescue is the crushing waves at the sandbar that Bernie must miraculously navigate.

Parallels between Bernie and Ray mount as the film toggles between them – both are intelligent workers, card-carrying members of “the greatest generation”, thrown into impossible situations by foolhardy ­supervisors.

With wet hair hanging down over their determined faces, they brave the storm with ingenuity and gumption, gritting their teeth through sheets of cold rain.

The Finest Hours has the feeling of a movie that's been stripped down to its bare cliches. That's not an altogether bad thing – the film's lean, classical simplicity is also its greatest ­asset. Gillespie's movie lacks even the slightest sense of pretension and features only the occasional flourish (notably a tracking shot from shipman to shipman as a message is relayed from the deck to the engine room).

It’s a smooth-sailing ship without any major leaks – yet there is not a lot of inspiration to fill its sails, either.