Prior to becoming an Oscar-winning writer and filmmaker, Brian Helgeland spent his youth off the coast of New Bedford, Mass., fishing for scallops. He grew up in the area, lived there and worked around the blue-collar fishermen who have scruffy beards, haven’t bathed in a week, swear like sailors and return to port to drink a boilermaker before noon if the bars are open that early.
Finestkind is a movie about two half-brothers who fish for scallops but find themselves in a lot of troubles. The problem with the movie is that he seems to bounce around from one trope to another. Ben Foster, who seems to be the go-to actor whenever you need someone who can effectively play someone who looks like they were raised on boats off southern Massachusetts. He plays Tom Elderidge, a captain with his own motley crew of sailors who hardly ever let anything phase them especially when a ship sinks and they’re stranded in a life raft.
One day, his younger half-brother, Charlie Sykes (Toby Wallace), shows up saying he’s graduated college and he wants to work for his brother. Then, the boat they’re on sinks. You’re expecting this to be a major plot point in the movie but it’s over and done with so quickly, it’s soon forgotten. Why did the boat sink? We never do know. There was a fire or something. But if you’re expecting something like this to come out in the final act, it doesn’t. It’s basically a catalyst for Tom, Charlie and the rest to take out Finestkind, the boat that belongs to Tom’s father, Ray (Tommy Lee Jones).
Ray and Tom have one of those relationships where they’re supposed to be estranged but seem to spend most of the movie talking to each other in every other scene. Fishing is good but Tom decides to go toward Canadian waters to get a better catch and they are spotted by Canadian coast guard and then when they return to New Bedford, the boat is seized and impounded with a $100,000 fine. Of course, they discover something about Ray when they return to tell him the bad news.
Charlie has also started a relationship with a petty drug dealer, Mabel (Jenna Ortega), who helps him with a way for them to smuggle heroin for a mediocre drug crime boss, Pete Weeks (Clayne Crawford), who hangs around in a donut shop where he does business. And of course, if you know anything about drug deals and smuggling, they never go the right way in movies. Helgeland wrote the script to this movie in his early 20s. And it has the feeling of a scriptwriter who just sat down and was told to write what they know, but decided to shake it up a crime thriller pulling in things from other better movies.
I’m sure Helgeland has worked on the script since he first wrote it but there’s some elements that should have been left out. I believe that there is a frat boy/dudebro comradery among sailors like this that even when they are floating in the North Atlantic in a raft, they’re busting each other chops like it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter they could be lost as sea for days or a storm might be their undoing. Helgeland also wrote the script for Mystic River so I’m sure there’s a lot of honesty with how even the characters’ parents act, using the F-bomb like it’s nothing and it’s commonplace to have a parent or a sibling who is a druggie.
But the crime element in the second half seems like it was added at the behest of a studio executive who was bored with the story of two brothers who are fishermen. You pretty much know where everything is going to go. Foster does what he can with the role, but there’s so much of Wallace’s goofy behavior that it gets annoying. I understand he’s suppose to play some young 20-something wet behind the ears, but you get tired of him after the first hour. Considering that it was originally supposed to be Ansel Elgort, it could’ve been worse. Jones seems to sleepwalk through his role and looks like age is finally catching up with him. Thankfully, he doesn’t attempt a New England accent and there’s a line that he’s from Texas that solves everything with him calling the local fishermen “swamp Yankees.”
Ortega replaced Zendaya and that might explain why Mabel is such a bigger role than what she needs to be. Filming was before Wednesday, X and the fifth Scream made her a household name, so it’s possible reshoots were made to beef up her character some. It’s just hard to believe that she could be a petty drug dealer even in New Bedford. But there’s a scene in which she says it’s not what she wants to do and attend community college.
The other sailors (Aaron Stanford, Ismeal Cruz Cordova and Scotty Tovaer) seem to mesh together with whoever needs to say a line so they don’t become background extras. Standford plays Skeemo, the druggie of the group. So you can probably connect the dots with the drug deal foul-up. Tim Daly and Lolita Davidovich play Charlie’s parents who spend most of their scenes asking Charlie why he wants to be a fisherman. Charlie is supposed to be attending Boston University Law School, but Wallace’s performance makes me thank Daddy Dearest made a generous donation.
There are some good scenes of the sailors fishing for scallops that I wish Helgeland had focused on more. But there’s not much here to keep the movie afloat.
What do you think? Please comment.