The Finest Hours

The 1899 regulations written for the U.S. Life Saving Service, one of the groups that became the modern U.S. Coast Guard, state:

"In attempting a rescue the keeper will select either the boat, breeches buoy, or life car, as in his judgment is best suited to effectively cope with the existing conditions. If the device first selected fails after such trial as satisfies him that no further attempt with it is feasible, he will resort to one of the others, and if that fails, then to the remaining one, and he will not desist from his efforts until by actual trial the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated. The statement of the keeper that he did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be accepted unless attempts to launch it were actually made and, or unless the conformation of the coast—as bluffs, precipitous banks, etc.—is such as to unquestionably preclude the use of a boat."

Overtime, this has morphed into what is now the Coast Guard’s unofficial motto, “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back,”  which actor Chris Pine, playing U.S. Coast Guardsman Bernie Webber mutters as he leads a crew of four aboard the CG-36500 motor life boat.

The story in a nutshell is this.  A powerful winter storm hit the north Atlantic in February, 1952.  A 503 f00t tanker, the Pendleton, sailing from Louisiana to Massachusetts broke in half in the early morning hours, an event that happened so quickly that the ship was unable to send a distress signal.  With seas ranging from 40 to 60 feet in height, some Coast Guard sailors refused to help with the rescue efforts when the Coast Guard’s radar showed the ship in trouble.  Bernie Webber, however, led a small crew out to rescue as many sailors as possible under the most difficult circumstances.  This is a true story.  In fact, two ships broke in half that morning off the coast of Cape Cod.  Much of the almost two-hour movie is, indeed, true, but a few facts have been changed for dramatic impact.  Nothing, however, that takes away from the power of the story.  There is a web site that details some of the facts and fictions used in the movie:  http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/finest-hours/

Anyone who has lived on or visited the coast and seen the tiny boats used by the Coast Guard will empathize with Webber and his crew.  And the salient fact is that the CG-36500 was able to rescue 32 sailors and keep its own four crew members alive, even though the boat was designed to hold no more than 12.  The boat shown below is an actual 36 foot Coast Guard Lifeboat, identical to the one used by Webber and his crew (and only two away in numbering).

The CG36498

on display at the historic Coast Guard Station at Port Orford, Oregon

photo by the author, 11/9/2007

For those of you who agree with me that most movies these days seem to be filmed at night with no special lighting, once again that is going to be the case.  But here, there’s a very practical reason for it.  The rescue happened during the dark of the night, and like it or not, there aren’t large spotlights out in the middle of the ocean.  The good news is that even though all the advertising for this movie says that it’s in 3D, it won’t be shown as a 3D movie at the Llano, so we don’t have to wear those crazy glasses that make the movie even darker.

The Finest Hours opened on January 29^th, 2016, and grossed almost $10,300,000 that weekend.  Total gross revenue for the three weeks the movie has been shown (through February 19^th) has been close to $25,500,000.  The Llano is showing the movie at 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, February 26-28^th.  See you there!

Upcoming films at the Llano Theatre (subject to change):

THE FINEST HOURS PG-13
February 26 - 28

THE REVENANT R
March 4 - 6
RISEN PG-13
March 11 - 13

In the interest of full disclosure:  I have no connection to the Llano Theatre.  I just appreciate the fact that a small town, Plains, Montana, has a movie house that shows great movies at a reasonable price usually within a month of their first on-screen appearance in the big cities, and I want to make sure that those of us who live in the area continue to enjoy this luxury for a long, long time.