Movies in Review: "The Finest Hours"

Two of my favorite movie genres, true stories and disaster dramas. So there should be no surprise that I was looking forward to seeing this one. Not to mention the trailer drew me in with it's visually attractive disaster scenes. Oh...and I'm also a huge fan of Chris Pine...soooooo...yeah. I kinda had mid-level to high expectations for this one. Unfortunately they weren't met :(.

My first complaint is that this movie was just too damn long for what was presented in the film. There wasn't enough drama outside of the disaster scenes to really keep this movie at a good pace. I enjoyed the characters, but something was definitely lacking in the story that made it feel kind of empty. As much as I enjoyed the characters, I felt no real connection. Chris Pine was great, but some back story on him would have been nice. I'm a huge fan of Casey Affleck, but he failed me in this movie. I don't know if his character was supposed to be way, but he felt a little withdrawn, and I just wanted more from him. A little too laid back for me. Eric Bana was annoying as hell, and I don't usually feel that way about him. It would have been nice to get a little more on the men sent out on the rescue. We only got small scenes/dialogue from them, and they really deserved more. The focus was mainly on the rescue, which involved scenes that didn't have the visual power it seemed to have in the trailer.

This movie was ok, but lacked the power to really make it a winner. Besides the water scenes, the movie was a little too soft, and lacked depth. I enjoyed being introduced to this rescue story, but I do believe these men deserved better than what was brought to the big screen...C+