La hora decisiva

February 1952. Bernie Webber is a boatswain/Petty Officer at a Coast Guard station on the coast of Massachusetts. A massive storm is in progress out to sea, damaging two tankers to the point that they appear likely to sink. On one tanker, the Pendleton, the chief engineer, Ray Sybert, is using all his ingenuity, resourcefulness and experience to keep the ship afloat and buy time until help arrives. Unfortunately for him and his crew, the Coast Guard have sent their best crew and rescue boat to the other stricken tanker. When the Coast Guard discover the Pendleton's situation, Webber and a 3-man crew are sent to help. The odds are stacked against Webber - just leaving the harbour in those seas will require large amounts of skill, courage and luck. Then they have to find the Pendleton, without a compass, rescue the crew and somehow make it home safe.

An enthralling (true) story of courage and survival. Compelling viewing - once the danger strikes, you're glued to your seat. What makes it so interesting is that they don't just focus on the efforts of the rescuers but also on the rescued. I found the Pendleton crew's story much more interesting than that of Webber and co - the ingenuity, resourcefulness and (reluctant) leadership of Sybert was amazing. This is helped by a great performance from Casey Affleck.

Not all good though. Many of the characters seem like cartoon stereotypes - the negative naysayers, the clingy girlfriend/fiancée, the inept commander. The romantic angle was overplayed and not that necessary. It did add depth to Webber's character but not much.

Performances vary. Casey Affleck is the stand-out as Sybert. Chris Pine is okay as Webber. Eric Bana is pretty weak and gives the worst American accent I've ever heard (I think it was supposed to be Southern but it varied so much and seemed so unnatural it was hard to tell). Holliday Grainger is a bit overbearing as Miriam, though that might have been intentional on the director's part.

In 1950, in Cape Cod in Massachusetts, the US Coast Guard station in Chatham receives a distress signal from the oil tankers SS Pendleton and SS Fort Mercer. Commander Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana) assigns the crew formed by Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), Andy Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Ervin Maske (John Magaro) to rescue the crew of the SS Pendleton in a small enclosed lifeboat. Cluff is warned about the intensity of the storm by Bernie and also by his girlfriend Miriam (Holliday Grainger) but he keeps the order. Meanwhile the SS Pendleton has broken and lost his forward part and his skilled and experienced engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) assumes the command of the survivors. He uses his abilities to steer the stern in a safer position, grounding it on an unstable bank of sand to avoid sinking.

"The Finest Hours" is based on the most daring rescue of a crew in a blizzard with a small enclosed lifeboat-rescue boat. The heroic work of the US Coast Guard crew is impressive, saving thirty-two survivors from the SS Pendleton. The ability of the engineer Ray Sybert is also praiseworthy. The film is technically impressive with breathtaking action scenes of the rescue operation. The romance is silly and only completes the running time. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Horas Decisivas" ("Decisive Hours")

This movie has a lot of action and suspense, which is what many of us look for in a film. However, it is much more than a story of an event at sea, it is a testimony of what four men of the US Coast Guard in the '50s were willing to do despite the risk to their lives.

A full scale nor'easter stirred the waters of Massechusetts Bay, making the seas dangerously life threatening. Word by two-way radio of vessels being damaged and broken from the force of the waves demanded the local Coast Guard Commander send his men to rescue who they could.

Reluctant, initially, to respond to such a perilous task, to rescue men that may still be alive aboard one sinking vessel, the Pendleton, Boatwainsmate Bernard Webber gathered three volunteer sailors to assist him. The freezing snow, winds, rain and treacherous waters were certainly more than he and his men bargained for when they enlisted.

Webber took the helm of the craft, the size of which could barely hold him and his three man crew through fifty and sixty feet waves, finally reaching, purely by luck, the darkened liner, a 503 foot, 10.448 gross ton tank vessel that, at its start, contained a full cargo of kerosene and heating oil.

Tactics used to keep the Pendleton from sinking are a lesson to watch. During today's rescue efforts, it is the CG's option to use a helicopter for such undertakings, but when the numbers are as many as these survivors, I doubt one trip would end with Webber's results.

The bravery and single-mindedness needed to accomplish what these four men sought to do makes me very proud to know our country has such heroic individuals willing to give their lives to save complete strangers.

This film starts kinda slow and unrelated to the story ( you expect to see) and it is rather slow paced at the beginning, but soon it gets more packed with action and rests until the end.

I enjoyed the film. It was even touching at the end. The fact that it is based on the true story does give it a plus. The breaking of a ship ( two, in fact) in haft because of the storm was really wow! I really got into the scene when they showed the first breaking of the ship. It was intense and really well done. I guess I liked those scenes which were filmed inside of the ship and all the hard work being done to prevent the sinking of it that caught my attention the most and the ones I really enjoyed. However, the relations between the sailors ( in the ship and at the land were somewhat superficially done and yes, you get that some of them are not liking each other, but, why is that is not rally explained and I though it should have been)

The love story that also goes parallel to the disaster at sea is sometimes sweet but most of the time is kinda blah and maybe it should have been cut in entirety from the film. It does add something to the film, but not that much in reality. But I guess it is important as it is one of the true facts.

All in all, not bad. I give it a rating eight!

"The Finest Hours" presents three stories, or perhaps one story from three perspectives. The stories are perhaps better described as intersecting rather than interwoven as developments in each storyline have relatively little effect on the other story lines other than points of intersection.

The most successful story is one of survival aboard a doomed ship in a fierce storm. Casey Afflect delivers a brilliant performance, possibly the best of his career, as an engineer who must win the respect of the crew and devise a seeming impossible plan to ensure their survival.

But the putative hero of the story is played by Chris Pine as a disgraced seaman thrust into a leadership position who manages a heroic rescue by alternatively slavishly adhering to regulations and blatantly disregarding them, but steadfastly pressing on by sheer obstinacy and succeeding by dumb luck.

The least successful story is a romance between Pine's character and a local girl who somehow manages to afford a car on a switchboard operator's salary, walks through snowdrifts in high heels without slipping or marring her shine, defies convention and embarrasses her boyfriend by proposing marriage, and barges into the all-male preserve of the Coast Guard station to demand that the commander commit an unconscionable act of cowardice in an exchange that might have been ghostwritten by the screenwriter's five- year-old daughter.

Having never read the book, it's difficult to tell what parts were embellished for dramatic impact, but much of the story seems hopelessly contrived. Critical pieces of equipment (radar, compass, radio) malfunction and miraculously return to service as if on cue. At one point, a large group of bystanders race off in support of the rescue effort and one expects them to activate certain items, but strangely nobody does until the love interest does, almost as an afterthought, and everybody else decides to follow suit, leaving the audience wondering why they went there if they didn't intend to do it in the first place. At another somebody shouts out a number referring to a group of people he could not possibly have counted.

This is another film that the #OscarsSoWhite and advocates of gender pay parity would rather audiences not see. It's basically a story of real men in the 1950s male-dominated era doing manly things while the womenfolk stay at home being supportive, raising children and mourning those who sacrificed their lives supporting their families. It was only four years after Eisenhower ended segregation in the military and the Coast Guard and various maritime labor unions were probably about as integrated as the Ku Klux Klan.

But this would never do in the twenty-first century when studios feel pressured to compromise dramatic structure in favor of political correctness. Consequently, two subplots seem to have been added and/or expanded to provide more diversity for audiences who prefer diversity over drama. One involves a black seaman whose cowardice results in the death of a Caucasian who takes him under his wing. The second is the romantic subplot, which is given roughly equal weight and screen time with the two other through lines. The story is not particularly interesting. The girl is a typical chick flick heroine – pretty but not gorgeous, more cherubic than voluptuous, virtuous and steadfast to a fault, with an anachronistic feminist streak. Both subplots could have been easily eliminated. Perhaps the film would not have been quite the critical or commercial disappointment if they had been sharply trimmed or eliminated.

The theme and moral seem weak. A theme concerning luck and happenstance undermines some of the effect, as do several plot contrivances, such as the equipment malfunctions. The episode is supposedly one of the greatest sea rescues in history, but it's presented as the consequence of doggedly plodding along in blind subservience to duty rather than anything one would ordinarily equate with heroism.

Technically, the film is top shelf. The period props, costumes, settings and make-up all seem authentic. There is a refreshing lack of distracting jiggly-cam shots. The special effects seem realistic. It lays on the schmaltz fairly heavily at points, but what can one expect from Disney?

It might have been more compelling if it had concentrated on the survival story, eliminated the love story and trimmed the rescue story.