Finestkind

A crime drama set on the coast of Massachusetts. Tom is a fisherman. He has his own boat, goes out with his crew, and the work gets harder: the quota has narrowed, the debt has grown, the boat is old. Charlie is his half-brother. He is going to law school, his family is well off, and he wants to spend the summer with his brother. The first part is at sea. Hauling nets, sleeplessness, weather, accidents on deck; the film shows the work in detail and teaches the audience a trade. Then the debt closes in. To keep the boat, a proposal is accepted: a cargo will be carried and the job is one night. From there the film comes ashore. The cargo is drugs, and its owner is not someone who lets questions pass. The two brothers and the crew suddenly find themselves inside another world. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but class: Tom's only possession is his boat, and Charlie looks like he has nothing to lose but does; their calculations of risk are not the same at all. The side line is the father: a retired captain, and the distance between him and his sons produces the film's best scenes. Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Jenna Ortega, Tommy Lee Jones and Ismael Cruz Córdova are in the cast. Brian Helgeland wrote and directed; he is known as a screenwriter and the story draws on the fishing world of New Bedford. Who it is for: anyone who likes American drama with a strong sense of place. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a tight crime story; the film gives its first half to fishing and its second to the genre, and the two parts never fully fuse.