Based on a true story, and feeling like a cheap rip-off, badly filmed version of The Perfect Storm, comes the Disney version of a true story of a dramatic coast guard rescue off the coast of Cape Cod back in the early 50s. The problem is it’s supposed to be dramatic but we don’t care about any of these characters. Perhaps the filmmakers decided if you put a love story in the water, anything can equal Titanic. Instead, with this, we get a disjointed and emotional mess.
Chris Pine stars as gee-golly-shucks, Bernie, a young coastguard who’s fallen for Mariam (Holiday Grainger). To get the storyline of a nor’easter ripping through an oil tanker up and running, Mariam proposes to Bernie within 60 seconds of their meeting. Throw in some 3D glasses once the waves get rocking, and well, you’ve got an excuse of a film that tosses around Cape Cod lingo – Chatham bars, Nantucket and Monomoy – as if they know what they’re talking about. Somebody didn’t do their research. [I’m a native Cape Codder.]
Casey Affleck plays Ray, Pine’s colleague who barely shows any signs of an emotional pulse, but its Eric Bana as their coast guard sergeant who screams robotic commands, who’s truly miscast.
In The Perfect Storm we loved the underdog fishermen, risking their lives, with a backstory on land, loves and the Crows’ Nest…of George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg making the very serious decision to go out to sea for swordfish season (during a storm) to feed their families and pay the mortgage. We feel their choices.
In this catastrophe, if this is their ‘finest hours’ I’d hate to see their darkest. 1 ½ tiara