It’s once again time for a BOATS (Based On A True Story) movie with actual boats in it, namely, Not Without Hope (now streaming on Paramount+). Joe Carnahan (The Rip) directs this gritty thriller adapting Nick Schuyler’s memoir, which details how he survived a boating mishap that took the lives of three of his friends. You may be familiar with the news headlines from 2009: Schulyer, his best pal Will Bleakley and two NFL players, Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, were fishing in a small vessel 50 miles off the coast of Florida when the boat capsized, and the men were hammered by a storm; Schuyler was found nearly two days later, clinging to the underside of the flipped vessel. As ever, it’s the type of story that naturally translates to the movies.
The Gist: “You can’t benchpress the ocean.” That’s the semi-flippant warning Paula (Floriana Lima) tosses at her boyfriend Nick (Zachary Levi) as he gears up for a day trip on the Gulf of Mexico, fishing with his buddies. See, he’s a personal trainer for his pals Marquis (Quentin Plair) and Corey (Terrence Terrell), NFL journeymen who’ve faced survival of the career sort, bouncing from team to team for a few years. No question, these are strong, tough guys. There’s no other way to be when you’re strapping on pads and helmets and playing violent sports that frequently adopt wartime metaphors, you know, “going to battle” on the field and supporting your brothers as you try to “conquer” your enemy. It’s the type of situation that can make a man feel indestructible, especially when coupled with the overconfidence that comes with being in your 20s.
The night before, Nick’s longtime friend Will (Marshall Cook) drops in late to the barbecue with the other guys and their families. Will just got downsized from his gig in finance: “The recession’s killing everything,” he laments. And since he has no job to go to tomorrow, they invite him along. The plan: Get up before the asscrack of dawn, head out on the ocean, pull in a few fish and return before that storm front on the radar moves in. They pack a zillion sandwiches, stow their cell phones in ziploc bags, make note that there’s no cell service way out on the water and crack jokes about Marquis’ favorite fishing spot, which he calls Cooper’s Hole. These are guys doing guy shit, enjoying each other’s company, occasionally pausing so Marquis can wax poetic – and ironic – about how the ocean makes him feel at home, at peace.
Long into the day, Nick sits bleary-eyed, motion sickness getting the best of him. Clouds start to gather and thunder rumbles off in the distance. It’s time to go. Corey tries to pull in the anchor, but it’s stuck. Marquis guns the engine to loosen it, raising the prow out of the water just as a big wave slams into the boat. It flips. The guys are tossed out. They swim back to the upside-down vessel and clamber on. Their workout mantra, “I get strong, you get strong, we get strong!” is no use – the boat’s too big to flip over. They hang on, huddling together, shivering as the rain batters them, trying to stave off the delirium of hypothermia. They fish out some life jackets and their phones, but there’s no service. The situation is dire, but Will summons the fortitude to ask Corey, “What’s worse, this or going 0-16 in Detroit last year?” This is what guys do: Bust each other’s balls even when they’re on the brink of death.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Not Without Hope exists in the milieu with disaster-at-sea/rescue/survival films like The Perfect Storm, The Guardian, All is Lost, and The Finest Hours.
Performance Worth Watching: Nobody’s going to win any Oscars with this one, but Levi shows a level of intensity we haven’t seen from him in the superhero movies and comedies that made him famous.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: It’s a simple assertion to make: We watch films like this, even when we know the outcome, to remind ourselves of human frailty and durability. The minutiae within a greater conflict – e.g., will they successfully retrieve their cell phones? How dangerous are those sharks circling the capsized craft? – provide dramatic tension as we imagine what we ourselves would do in unimaginable scenarios like this. Would you be brave enough to dive under the boat to seek out supplies in the cabin? Could you summon the will to swim back to the craft after waves sweep you off over and over and over again? What would you say to your closest friends if you believe these are your final moments? Carnahan makes sure Not Without Hope bristles with the you-are-there immediacy that provides the narrative engine for survival thrillers like this, his camera floating on turbulent seas, the audio going in and out as it bobs above and below the surface.
But the film never transcends the earnest matter-of-factness of this genre, which often dictates that true-story narratives are best served with accuracy than creative interpretation. That doesn’t leave much room for subtext, and in this case, a story of what’s essentially emasculation – these physically powerful men aren’t so powerful after all – is washed out in a standard man-vs.-nature conflict. Not Without Hope frequently comes off as calculated, its poignancy reverse-engineered by the inevitability of its preordained conclusion: First-act jokes about Nick’s bright orange jacket become a third-act realization that rescuers could see it from afar; an early conversation about selfishness foreshadows later situations in which characters wrestle with whether they should save themselves or their friends first.
Meanwhile, the film follows well-established dramatic beats of the genre, jumping between the ordeal at sea and worried family members at home (veteran actor JoBeth Williams turns up with a brief, but sturdy performance as Nick’s mother). They either wait by the phone or demand answers from a Coast Guard honcho played by Josh Duhamel, who ticker-tapes clunky, but helpful exposition about the effects of hypothermia and delivers a rah-rah speech about not giving up hope.
Carnahan’s rock-solid visual execution keeps the film on track when it gets repetitive and sags under the weight of its top-heavy narrative – the boat capsizes a quarter of the way into the run time, with another 90 minutes to go. It gets repetitive and doesn’t always effectively orient viewers in terms of the passage of time. It portrays cold hard realities with conviction, and conveys some broad emotions, but as the survivors inevitably take stock of their lives on the brink of losing them – cue a brief conversation about faith in God that seems to be a prerequisite of all recent Zachary Levi movies – it’s increasingly clear that the movie has failed to fill them out as three-dimensional characters.
I recall the maritime adventure Captain Phillips, in which Tom Hanks’ boat captain survives a harrowing physical and emotional gauntlet, and the film is brave enough to show him in the aftermath, the final scene depicting his highly traumatic emotional breakdown. Not Without Hope features no similar scene, the likes of which separate art from merely functional storytelling.
Our Call: Not Without Hope is a by-the-numbers but modestly engaging BOATS movie. It won’t change your life, but it also won’t make you feel like you wasted your time. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.