Set in an nightmare dystopia where GPS software doesn’t exist (the 1950s), Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours is the cheeseball retelling of a certain-death rescue mission undertaken by the doughboy dregs of the Massachusetts coastguard. An oil tanker has been broken in two during a violent storm, and it’s up to recently engaged Chris Pine to trundle out into the swell and save a crew of surly seadogs captained by Casey Affleck’s taciturn poet warrior. It’s the type of film whose script and plot feel as if they’ve been assembled by an algorithm rather than probing human minds (sample dialogue: “Not on my watch!”), but it’s so chest-thumpingly earnest that it’s hard not to get swept up in the apple-pie melodrama and sturdy effects work. Sweetly appealing – and Pine’s rain-acting game is strong – it’s a shame that the title tells you exactly how everything turns out.
