‘Finestkind’ Review: Toby Wallace and Ben Foster Make a Magnetic Pair as Self-Destructive Siblings
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Finestkind,” the name of both Brian Helgeland’s new film and the high-line fishing boat Tommy Lee Jones captains within it, is one of those words that New Englanders find hard to define, but seem to have no trouble using in a sentence.
It means quality — of fish, of people, of principles — and it sets the bar for the shaggy family portrait Helgeland crafts around two half-brothers wrestling with their place in the blue-collar New Bedford community.
The movie, alas, is just so-so, tripping over its own feet for the first couple reels until such time as the siblings cross the Northern Line to (illegally) dredge for scallops in Canadian waters, and then it gets good.
Not the genre elements, mind you. There’s a stock plot in which the brothers need $100,000 to get the Finestkind ship out of impound, turning to a harebrained heroin-smuggling plot that goes sideways in exactly the way you might expect, and resolves itself in an even more predictable manner.
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