January 30, 2016 -- This is the based on fact story of one of the most daring rescues in history, which took place off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts in February of 1952. While the build up to the rescue, and the post-rescue part of the story is weak, the rescue itself is amazing.

I saw this at the Frontier 9 Cinema in Cheyenne, run by the Carmike Cinema chain. I saw this movie in 3D, and all the scenes appeared to be very dark. At first I thought maybe the movie was too dark, but then I recalled that the previews before the film seemed dark as well. One of the problems with 3D (using the Real D system in this theater) is the loss of brightness. You need maximum brightness for a film like this, especially when presented in 3D.

On to the rescue. The tanker Pendleton, built during World War II, had run aground in the Hudson river in July of 1951 and sustained some hull damage that was later repaired. On February 18, 1952, during a raging storm, the tanker's hull split in two at the same spot it had been damaged earlier. The storm not only broke the Pendleton in two, but also broke another ship in two, the SS Fort Mercer, on the same night in the same area. The dual disasters stretched the Coast Guard's resources to the limit.

The rescue story also is told in two parts — the story aboard the doomed ship, and the story of the brave crew of a small, 36-foot Coast Guard rescue boat on a mission to save the Pendleton's crew. Based on the book “The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue” by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman, the film is largely factual as far as the rescue itself goes. However, there is plenty of romance and dramatic license taken in some non-rescue scenes.

After the Pendleton split in half, the men in the bow section perished, but the 33 men remaining on board in the aft section remained alive behind water-tight doors. They kept the ship's engine running for hours, and even managed to steer the ship. Casey Affleck (“Gone Baby Gone”) plays Ray Sybert, an engineer aboard the Pendleton who becomes a reluctant hero.

The remaining men on the Pendleton couldn't decide what to do, stick with the sinking ship, or get into lifeboats and abandon ship. Sybert believed that lifeboats would not survive in the storm. He finally takes action to prevent the crew from leaving the ship and devises a desperate plan to run the ship aground on a shoal in order to keep it from sinking as long as possible. By rigging up a manual rudder control, the crew is able to steer what's left of the Pendleton. They have no idea if any rescue is being attempted, or if anyone even knows where they are.

Meanwhile at the Chatham Lifeboat Station (the real Chatham lifeboat station is seen in the film) the officer in charge, Daniel Cluff, realized that most, if not all the Coast Guard resources in the area had gone to the Fort Mercer rescue. He decided to send a crew and a small boat, Motor Lifeboat CG 36500 (now restored an on display at Orleans, Massachusetts on Cape Cod) to the Pendleton rescue.

This rescue was considered suicide because the tiny boat would have to navigate through Chatham Bar, where waves had built up as high as 70 feet in the shallows. The boat's skipper, Bernie Webber (played by Chris Pine of “Star Trek”) had tragically failed an attempt to get a Coast Guard dory boat through the same passage two years earlier in a in a similar storm. He knew what he was up against, and so did his all-volunteer crew.

The dual stories of trying to keep the stern of the Pendleton from sinking and the small boat Coast Guard rescue play out in the face of enormous waves and driving snow. This movie gives you a pretty good idea of what New Englanders call a “real Nor'easter.” The tiny rescue boat survives an amazing pounding. At times it is completely underwater. Some of the topside structure is ripped away, including the compass. The skipper and crew don't know where they are, or where the Pendleton is, or if anyone is left alive if they do to find it, but Webber presses on with the search, relying on his seamanship and knowledge of the area.

This is truly an amazing tale of survival and an amazing rescue, but the movie does fall short in almost every non-rescue scene. The rescue takes place at night, so this is a dark film to begin with. The New England accents make some of the dialog hard to understand. It makes more sense to see this in 2D with the brightest possible projection setup you can find. I will probably watch this at home, with subtitles, and my projector set on bright. Until then, this film rates a C.

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Copyright © 2016 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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