The Finest Hour

Rob Lowe and a bunch of great locations cannot fix this mess. Set in the 80s, with action in the first Gulf War, so the history is

Filmed like a third rate 90s TV show, every fault of the actors, script, FX, and more is brutally apparent. Also comically badly edited, with choices like a VO explaining a time jump that happens 2 minutes before it makes sense to have it.

For military buffs, the equipment in action sequences is 90s video game quality. A comically fake SDV. Paragliders. Scopes mounted to the slides of VP70s so they can snipe with them, and then smoke drifts up old west style. Rob Lowe is an excellent Sabrina. Oh, some enemy stuff is 60s Japanese monster movie quality. Oh, the big silver rocket!

Romantic sub-plot is way too dominant, which is awful as it's so ham-handedly played.

Do not be fooled. Much of the training is well done, but it falls apart outside of that.

I think the last Aussie reviewer hit the nail on the head. This movie despite being based on the experiences of an elite US naval frog team at war is surprisingly value-neutral when it comes to extolling the virtues of the US military, or even the reasons for going to war. This may have to do with the fact that the writer/director, Shimon Dotan, is an Israeli. In short, I enjoyed this movie, because it introduces some character development in a genre where it is often conspicuously absent. The casting of Rob Lowe as the career jackass was a stroke of genius! That said, there are aspects of honour and sacrifice inherent in his role, which he does bring out. However, like others I felt Gale Hansen stole the show with his role as the strong-willed and dependable leader contrasting with Lowe's as the antithesis. I like the fact that everything didn't work out at the end, and the monologue delivered at the end summed up the whole experience nicely. Go see it.

I thought for sure this was a spoof of late 80s military movies. There fact that someone wrote this to be a serious drama really blew my mind. It reminded me of The Room with heavy weaponry.

The best part of this film was the two minutes of documentary footage from the First Gulf War. Everything else was ridiculously stupid and unbelievable. Now I was a soldier, not even special ops, yet the training and combat scenes made me cringe. However, I do highly recommend it for Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment!

It may not be a classic but it is certainly not crap as it is made out to be by IMDB rating. It is a pretty good, in a word, decent movie, with the US Navy Seals training, two rival-turned friends during training days, a love triangle involving them and their assignments during Iraq invasion of Kuwait. I found it a well-rounded enjoyable movie, with the opening soundtrack providing the ideal start to this kind of a story. Nothing got overboard, and the love triangle reminded me shades of Pearl Harbour. No qualms rating it 7/10 as against an unjustifiably low rating of 4.6 by IMDB.