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The Finest Hours | 2016 | PG-13 | - 2.5.4

Based on a true story: in 1952 an oil tanker is spilt in half and is sinking off the coast of Massachusetts with over 30 sailors trapped inside the ship's stern. The ship's engineer (Casey Affleck) organizes an escape plan while the US Coast Guard attempts a rescue with a three-man crew led by a 24-year-old (Chris Pine) in a motor boat during a heavy storm and without a compass. Also with Eric Bana, Holiday Grainger, Ben Foster, John Magaro, Kyle Gallner and John Ortiz. Directed by Craig Gillespie. [1:57]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A man and a woman kiss and hug for several seconds in close-up and hug. A man and a woman kiss for several seconds.
 A woman on a dance floor asks her boyfriend to marry her and he mumbles and declines; she leaves the building, he follows her, then stalls and finally says that even though he has a dangerous job they should go ahead and get married. Upon meeting a woman for the first time, a man stares, admiring her hair and face; they agree to go on a date.
 An older sailor taunts a younger sailor, asking him if the younger man's fiancée wears the pants in the family and states, "Sound like Good Girl cut off your p... (only the first letter of a presumably anatomical term is pronounced). A sailor calls the round seat at the front of a motor boat a "glory hole."
 A singer wears a long evening gown and slight cleavage is briefly visible.

VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - A motor boat finds the wrecked stern of an oil tanker and men on the stern let down ladders and begin climbing down, falling into the water and being pulled out by rescuers; one man falls off a ladder and is hit in the head by metal debris (we see no blood, but a long shot shows his body float and then sink to the bottom of the ocean) and a teen boy says that he is afraid. A ship creaks loudly and slides off a shoal, sinking to the bottom of the ocean and churning up dirt and debris.
 A man rigs up a metal beam to steer the stern of a tanker ship onto a shoal and we hear men shouting to be heard; sparks fly and additional water flows into the belly of the stern, putting workers in waist-high water, a chain snaps loudly, men are sent jostling into walls, more water comes in, and a few small fires ignite as cables snap and a barrel of oil falls and breaks open and two men fall into the water, but survive.
 Four men in a motor boat attempt to find and rescue shipwrecked men in a blizzard of snow, rain, and sleet, frigid temperatures and gale force winds; a sailor tells a new recruit that pitch-poling is when a high wave sends a boat flipping end over end into the water (this does not happen) and the boat is beaten by crashing waters a dozen times, with waves as high as 70 feet causing the engine to stall, but then restart.
 A man with a flashlight stumbles along a gangway catwalk of a ship and stops abruptly when he sees that the end of it and that the other half of his ship has been torn away while other men stand on the deck above him watching as the front half of the ship loses power and sinks with loud creaking (we later hear that the captain and crew on the front half have all died). Men stumble off a boat, shivering and helping one another to the dock.
 A man states that the stern half of his ship will sink in 4-5 hours and the crew must run her aground on a shoal in order to survive; an argument ensues as waves in the ocean become higher, but the engineer gains support for his plan. Several men try to launch a lifeboat, but another man grabs an axe, cuts the small boat loose and shouts that the men would have died; a short scuffle follows without injuries and one man says, "Hope you didn't just kill us all." 34 men stand inside the stern of a ship (one man has a large scrape on his forehead) and one man complains and heckles the chief engineer while another man uses his belt as a sling to support his arm after it was burned (we see bruised and swollen flesh). A man sends a coxswain and crew of three men out in a small motor boat to look for the stern of a ship that contains three dozen men; we hear that the coxswain had attempted to rescue several men in similar bad storm conditions the previous year, unsuccessfully and those men died; men in the lunch room mumble that it is a suicide mission.
 We see objects slide on tables and galley shelves and hear the creaking of metal in the bulkheads inside a tanker ship during a storm while an engineer pleads with the ship's captain to slow down because water threatens to burst a weld in the tanker's hull that creaks and shrieks; the captain ignores the request and the ship splits crosswise down the middle as a hole bursts in the weld and water pours in, sending a man flying head-first into a metal beam and falling below the frame (we see no blood), then sparks fly and men shout as they run to cover the hole with planks of wood and matting. Two men bounce into the air out of a boat and land safely back in the boat.
 Heavy snow falls in Massachusetts and the waves in the harbor become choppy and increase in height. We see the ocean, where a large ship is tossed on high waves while rain and snow pour down at night. A man sees the floating stern of a ship from his house on shore and reports it to the authorities. A shore town's lights all fail and people drive to the shoreline to shine their headlights for a rescue boat to see; the camera cuts to a boat carrying an overload of men, all shaking in the snow and cold temperatures and fighting to stay awake as they search for shore lights.
 A woman argues with a Coast Guard officer for an extended period of time until he shouts loudly at her to leave; she storms out of the office in winter without her coat and drives into a snow drift, stalling her car, but unhurt; another car arrives several hours later and a tow truck frees the stuck car. A woman says that her husband was a sailor killed at sea, but that the failed rescue leader in that disaster is a good man. Two men in a rescue boat argue about going back to base and the leader shouts loudly that they will not leave men to die at sea. In a Coast Guard office, a radioman reports gale winds of 40–60 mph. A woman says she fears the water only at night and does not like small boats. A Coast Guard sailor in an office says, "Sometimes men die."

LANGUAGE 4 - 4 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 10 mild obscenities, name-calling (Smokey the Bear, crazy, single man, dog, hothead), exclamations (shut-up), 1 religious profanity (GD), 10 religious exclamations (e.g. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Oh God, My God, Jesus Christ, It's Between You, Him, and God, Godspeed); thick accents and noise make much of the dialogue difficult to discern.

SUBSTANCE USE - Two men drink mugs of beer at a table in a café and their dates drink Manhattans, several men at a bar drink from mugs of beer while a few have empty shot glasses beside their mugs and one empty beer bottle is shown on the bar, and a man says he hopes the bar is open.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Second chances, disasters at sea, US Coast Guard, dangerous jobs, accepting a challenge, testing one's knowledge, following regulations, responsibility, fear, death, regret, cooperation, courage, teamwork, determination, faith, forgiveness.

MESSAGE - The mission that saved the trapped crew was one of the greatest successes of the US Coast Guard and was accomplished by a small inexperienced team.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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