Grade: C+

This historically-based rescue-at-sea film is set in 1952, and apart from the CGI it might have been made then, given the surfeit of clichés reflective of pictures from the Eisenhower era. “The Finest Hours” dramatizes the admittedly amazing feat of the crew of a small Coast Guard boat that managed to reach and save most of the men on half of an oil tanker that had been literally ripped in two by a storm and was sinking fast. But like Ron Howard’s recent pre-Moby Dick tale “In the Heart of the Sea,” the old-fashioned approach fails to set the pulse racing as it should.

That’s partially because while each of the two seafaring plot threads has exciting moments, neither proves as consistently invigorating as one might expect. On the one hand, there’s the effort of the Coast Guard men—stalwart expedition commander Boatswain Mate First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), his hardened second-in-command Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), dedicated Engineerman Third Class Andy Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and eager outsider Seaman Ervin Maske (John Magaro)—to get past the sand bar in the harbor into the roiling waves and then find the vessel in distress although their compass has been lost in the process. On the other, there’s the effort of Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck), the laconic chief engineer of the slowly sinking tanker Pendleton, to keep the remnant of the rudderless, radio-less ship afloat until help arrives—despite the fact that many of his fellow crewmen have little respect for him.

Director Craig Gillespie stages both of these narratives—separated almost as completely as the two halves of the Pendleton but then shuffled together—decently enough, but the dark grey palette of the nighttime setting (and of the boats themselves) lends a general visual murkiness to the proceedings, only worsened by a 3D format that makes the images of cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe even less distinct. The problem is further accentuated by the computerized waves, which turn the prolonged sequence of the Coast Guard vessel repeatedly trying to broach the bar into something that might have come out of a surfing movie: it appears that the boat is being swallowed up again and again, only to emerge pretty much unscathed on the other side.

More could have been made of this ocean action, frankly, if the characters were more compelling. But the only person to register strongly is Sybert, whom Affleck plays with a mixture of shy reticence and simmering intensity that grows more and more affecting as the film proceeds. By contrast Pine comes across as stiff. That’s true to the characterization of Webber as a rigidly controlled do-gooder haunted by a previous rescue expedition that apparently turned out badly (the details are only fleetingly referred to), but it doesn’t make the young boatswain any more engaging.

As for the other men on the two vessels, they’re largely portrayed in stock terms. Among those on the Pendleton, there’s a frightened neophyte, a burly strongman, a genial cook (who keeps singing Frank Loesser’s “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat”), a rude naysayer who insists on using the lifeboats, though doing so would spell immediate doom…and so on. And Webber’s crew is equally stereotypical, with Gallner and Magaro both regular guys and Foster, an actor who can ordinarily be expected to bring something unusual to even the blandest role, disappointingly one-note as gruff Livesey. Things come alive during the actual rescue sequence, but that’s a long time in coming.

Still, with all their flaws the scenes at sea are considerably better than those on land, which focus on telephone reporter Miriam (Holliday Grainger). The first part of the picture focuses on her romance with Bernie—their cute meeting on a blind date, their going out for an excursion on a fishing boat, the proposal of marriage that comes from her rather than him, and the like. All of this has the feel of a Hallmark Hall of Fame special. And things don’t improve when she bursts into the Coast Guard station to confront the unit commander, Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Cuff (Eric Bana, totally wasted) about the fate of her husband-to-be, and then gets stuck in a snow drift from which she’s extricated by a local family that’s suffered a loss of its own. This material may be designed to enhance the emotional pull of the danger Webber faces on his mission, but if so it fails miserably, and while Grainger looks great in her period outfits (Louise Frogley’s costumes are excellent overall, as is the fifties ambience captured in Michael Corenblith’s production design and William Ladd Skinner’s art direction), she never manages to become much more than a gal who’s stepped out of a scene in a glossy fifties flick or a department store advertisement from the era.

There’s nothing radically bad about “The Finest Hours,” but like its nondescript title, it’s underwhelming despite the size of those billowing CGI waves. And though Pine plays the role of the Disney hero, it’s really Affleck’s Sybert who quietly becomes the most remarkable fellow on view—as much, or more, the rescuer as the Coast Guard guy.

Grade: C+

The atmosphere is the real star of this new screen version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play, in which even Michael Fassbender’s ambitious thane and Marion Cotillard’s manipulative Lady Macbeth—as well as the Bard’s text—play second fiddle to the graphic-novel mood of gloom, blood and fatalism favored by director Justin Kurzel and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. The result is not without its impressive moments, but like so many of the earlier screen adaptations, this “Macbeth” falls short.

One intriguing element of the much-edited screenplay fashioned by Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff and Michael Lesslie is its emphasis on father-son relationships. The play alludes to Lady Macbeth’s having given birth, but Kurzel’s film expands on that by beginning with a scene in which the couple presides over the funeral of an infant, presumably theirs, and then spotlighting the death of an older boy—either Macbeth’s older son or a favored squire to whom he’s become a surrogate father—in the initial battle sequence. Later the film makes a point of placing special focus not only on Duncan (David Thewlis) and Malcolm (Jack Reynor), but on Banquo (Paddy Considine) and young Feance (Lochlann Harris), the lad who here takes up the sword of vengeance at the very close. It also takes pains to show us the fiery execution of Macduff’s (Sean Harris) children along with his wife (Elizabeth Debicki).

The fire motif is also an element of the red hue that Kurzel and Arkapaw add to the final reel: they have Macduff set the timbers his soldiers are carrying from Birnam Wood aflame. That might not make much sense in the context of the narrative, wherein the branches are intended to conceal the approaching invaders, but it certainly does exhibit extravagant visual flair.

These are interesting interpretive touches, but this “Macbeth” is, despite its love of gore and swordplay (though, to be sure, it doesn’t match Polanski in that respect), mostly a grimly lugubrious, and not terribly compelling, affair. One can understand Kurzel’s desire to avoid the sort of declamatory style that Orson Welles brought to his threadbare 1948 film (or Olivier would surely have brought to his, had he made one—Branagh probably will when he gets around to it), but the solution he’s adopted—of having a good deal of the text whispered or mumbled, often against montages of extraneous visuals—has the effect of muting its effect. (Another choice, in which one of the most famous soliloquies is delivered straight into the camera, as if it were the equivalent of an interview, doesn’t work much better.) The result is a version of “Macbeth” that comes across as a prolonged dirge interrupted occasionally by spurts of action—mostly at beginning and end, though at a few points in between as well.

Nor do the cast make up for the directorial choices with overpowering performances. Fassbender brings a leonine gruffness to Macbeth, but doesn’t capture the character’s emotional descent following the death of Duncan in much more than a generalized way, and his recitation of the dialogue has little poetry. Cotillard is similarly hampered by Kurzel’s vision. She’s very good in the scene showing her cunningly covering up the evidence of her husband’s guilt in Duncan’s death, and is aided by the addition of situating Lady Macbeth as a witness to the killing of the Macduff clan. But while she registers strength in the sequence in which her husband sees Banquo’s ghost during a celebratory feast, her later scenes—even her big mad moment—are less persuasive. The remaining cast is good without bringing any special insight.

In fact, throughout Kurzel appears less interested in the actors than the settings in which they’re placed. He and Arkapaw certainly employ the Scottish locations to good effect, fashioning windswept vistas that emphasize the unforgiving harshness of the environment. And Ely Cathedral is an imposing stand-in for Macbeth’s castle. Fiona Crombie’s production design, Nick Dent’s art direction and Alice Felton’s set decoration are all excellent, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran has provided garb that adds a touch of imagination to authenticity.

But in the end the film has the feel of being more Kurzel’s “Macbeth” than Shakespeare’s. One could make the same observation about Welles’s and Polanski’s versions (or Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” of course), but in each of those cases there are more compensatory elements than one finds here.