There’s a certain type of movie which I classify like this: I imagine myself either on a very hot or a very cold Saturday afternoon. Or, sometimes, it’s raining. Regardless, it’s weather that I don’t feel like spending much time engaging with directly. On this day – a day in which my only other option is to just stay home – I pass a movie theater. Hey, what a great way to get out of this hot/cold/wet weather. I purchase a ticket to whatever’s playing. After the movie is over, I think to myself, I could live my life without ever seeing that movie, but that was a satisfying enough way to kill two hours of this miserable day and I in no way feel like my money should be refunded.
The Finest Hours fits into that category.
(Now I hope that quote is put on the movie poster: “The Finest Hours is a satisfying enough way to kill two hours of this miserable day and I in no way feel like my money should be refunded” – Mike Ryan, Uproxx.)
Before we go any further, I have to write about Eric Bana’s accent in this movie. It’s one of the great bad accents in the history of cinema – so much so that it should be celebrated. At some point, Tom Hardy is going to be flipping through channels while out sailing on The Bane of My Existence (that’s the name of Tom Hardy’s yacht, I’m guessing) and he’s going to come across The Finest Hours. At this point, Hardy will watch it because he’s a little pooped from sailing all day and needs a break and the only other viewing option he likes is You’ve Got Mail, but he’s already seen that too many times.
Anyway, the point is once Eric Bana comes on screen, Tom Hardy is going to say out loud, “I have no bloody idea what this bloke’s accent is trying to be.”
Bana plays Daniel Cluff, the officer-in-charge of Chatham, Mass. Coast Guard operations. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, So, he does a bad Boston like everyone else ever, so what. No, what makes this unique is that Cluff is not from the area – which becomes a plot point when his subordinates question his decisions. The real Daniel Cluff is from Virginia, and had been stationed in the South. So, Bana sports a weird Southern twang unlike anything I’ve never heard before. And what makes this really unusual is that Bana will be in full twang mode, but then he will say the last name of Chris Pine’s character, Bernie Webber, and his accent will revert back to his native Australian. And the thing is, Bana says the name “Webber” a lot.
So we get a lot of sentences that sound something like, “Naw, y’all wheel see thangs my way, ain’t that right … Weuba?”
A year from now, Tom Hardy will present Eric Bana with an honorary Oscar for this accent. It will be deserved. I will stand up and applaud.
Oh, right … the movie: It’s fine.
It’s a weird thing to watch Chris Pine play frumpy and introverted. It’s also weird that when people in this movie talk about Bernie Webber when Bernie’s not around, you get the sense that Bernie is an ugly man and a bit of a dip. “Oh, yeah … Bernie.” And then Chris Pine shows up, kind of pretending he’s not The Most Handsome Man In The World, even though he’s right there in front of our faces.
Based on a true story, Bernie Webber (Weuba) is a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, stationed in Chatham in 1952. He falls in love with a nice woman, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), and enjoys living a simple life. Many allusions are made to some sort of boating accident in which Bernie failed to rescue the stranded sailors. Everyone seems to agree that Bernie did everything he could, but yet it’s brought up almost every time Bernie Webber’s name is mentioned.
The Finest Hours, directed by Craig Gillespie (Million Dollar Arm, another “fine” movie), shifts back and forth between Webber and the crew of the SS Pendleton, an oil tanker that splits in two after getting caught in a storm. With no captain (he perished in the half of the tanker that sank), an engineer named Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) takes command of the ship. (It’s at this point I will mention that Abraham Benrubi — an actor who will forever be Kubiac from Parker Lewis Can’t Lose — plays a cook on the Pendleton. I only mention this because it made me happy.)
Eric Bana’s Cluff sends Bernie and a small crew on what people think is a suicide mission to rescue the Pendleton. “Ya’ll go get ‘em. Ya hear me, Weuba?”
A lot of people will probably compare The Finest Hours to The Perfect Storm. I say this because a) I just did, b) both movies are about storms that do seem kind of perfect, and c) if this movie came out 10 years ago, it probably would have starred Matt Damon. (No, Matt Damon is not in The Perfect Storm, but George Clooney is and those two are friends, so close enough.)
Anyway, yes, The Finest Hours is pretty much exactly what you think it is. It’s just fine for a day when you have nothing else to do. If you need to kill two hours, well, The Finest Hours is a good insecticide. It’s not really the finest hours, but it’s a fine hours.
Right now, as I type this, I’m debating if I should write another three paragraphs about Eric Bana’s accent or just stop writing about this movie. I have decided on the latter, but I already regret it.
Mike Ryan lives in New York City and has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
