The Finest Hours 3D

Directed by Craig Gillespie.  Written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson.  Stars Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Holliday Grainger.  
2016, 117 minutes, Color, Rated PG-13.

Summary:
In February of 1952, one of the worst storms to ever hit the East Coast struck New England, damaging an oil tanker off the coast of Cape Cod and literally ripping it in half. On a small lifeboat faced with frigid temperatures and 70-foot high waves, four members of the Coast Guard set out to rescue more than 30 stranded sailors trapped aboard the rapidly-sinking vessel.

3D Rating:  ** 1/2 out of *****

At first glance, this seems like an odd choice for a 3D film.  More than half of it takes place at night, in poor lighting conditions and with weather further obscuring things.   The film is based on a true story and was originally intended as a smaller budget film.  It grew considerably in both scope and budget during production and ended up as a big-budget special effects bonanza.  Whether it needed the big budget to tell this story is debatable--it probably didn't--but it ended up with over 1000 visual effects shots.  

The core story is compelling, and the storytelling is intelligent, efficient, and respectful.  This respectfulness also results in a curious downplaying of the danger inherent to the events depicted.  Kind of like how a date can be too respectful if you are in the mood for some action--sometimes you just want something more and if your date is unwilling you can mistake it for a lack of interest.  I do not think that the filmmakers were uninterested in their audience.  I think it more likely that the original small film idea got swamped by the visual effects needed to make it more of an action film. 

All this said I liked the film.  Now, on to the 3D.

3D disclaimer:  I have a LED TV that can display digital 3D.  My 3D reviews are based on how things look on my set. I am aware that other methods of displaying 3D may be different.

THE FINEST HOURS was filmed in 2D and converted to 3D in post-production.  According to the director the filmmakers planned for 3D while making the film.  This is not always the case, so this attention to framing coupled with the significant amount of CGI layers results in a fairly robust 3D environment.  It does not hold a candle to a real 3D film, of course, but the quality of the conversion is above average.  

There are very little in the way of "pop-out" effects in the film, but depth is truly outstanding, which helps sell the different environments.  There is one shot that involves a verbal message being relayed from the top deck of the ship down to the engine room that is a good encapsulation of the benefits of the 3D in this film.  As each crew member relays the message, we see another hallway, stairwell, or open room that subconsciously helps sell the illusion that these characters are on an actual ship.  It's an impressive shot, made even more impressive since they were not on an actual ship and the shot in question was pieced together from multiple shots on the soundstage as a visual effect.  Any scene with weather also works effectively in 3D, which is most of the film.   

I won't say that the 3D made this a dramatically different experience than the 2D version, but the 3D is effective enough that it will be my go-to format if I watch the film again.  As stated above, this was an odd choice for 3D but it turned out to be a reasonably rewarding 3D experience.  It was not released on physical media in 3D in the United States as Disney had abandoned 3D by 2016.