The plot of “Finestkind,” a crime thriller onParamount+, centres on the reunion of two brothers after a long absence. Things unexpectedly go awry and they wind up becoming entangled with a violent crime syndicate during the period when they are bonding and the younger one is getting a taste of his elder brother’s lifestyle. The degree to which the plot is driven by the characters is what keeps the movie engaging to watch. Because of how realistic and grounded the film feels, it’s like witnessing a real-life story come to life. To what extent is it true to life? Warning: This section contains spoilers.
Brian Helgeland Drew on His Childhood Experiences to Make Finestkind
The plot of “Finestkind” is fictitious. Helgeland created the initial screenplay for the movie when he was in his late 20s, but he wasn’t able to have it made until around three decades later. The director was raised by fisherman. Everyone in the family was involved in commercial fishing, including his father, grandfather, and other relatives. After graduating from college, Helgeland also entered the workforce and worked on a yacht for roughly 18 months until he fell in love with filmmaking.
Helgeland described the experience as strange and disclosed that the story had been simmering for a while in his head. At one point, he had Heath Ledger connected, ready to go on the movie when the timing was right. Jake Gyllenhaal entered the picture at one time, but nothing exactly worked out. Helgeland was prepared to throw down the gauntlet when it came. He was his own technical adviser on the film, thanks to his vast understanding of how boats operate.
The director become intimately familiar with every little detail of the characters since he had spent so much time crafting the plot and then reworking it over and again in the years that followed. He was meticulous in his attention to detail, even down to the neighbourhoods in New Bedford the characters grew up in. Actress Jenna Ortega was reportedly taken on a tour of the town by him to show her the area where her character was raised.
In a related tale, the filmmaker disclosed that Tommy Lee Jones inquired about his characters in great detail when he was contacted to work on the film. Upon noticing that his on-screen persona was a native of Texas, he inquired about his plans for Massachusetts. Helgeland knew the answer and divulged the information that was subsequently used in the movie. Later, in New Bedford, the director discovered a fisherman’s car with Texas licence plates. To demonstrate to Jones how his character’s past wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb in the film, he recorded it and gave it to him. One of the things that allegedly persuaded Jones to accept the position was the cost of scallops in New England.
It makes fitting that Helgeland built the characters on real people he’s known over the years, given how much of his personal experiences he incorporated into the film. In particular, Helgeland modelled Eldridge and Tom’s connection on the tumultuous ties he had seen between a number of fisherman and their fathers.
Helgeland didn’t want to hold back when it came to filming the movie because he had worked so hard on the script. He brought the actors and crew to New Bedford, the setting for the first part of the movie. The director grew up in this neighbourhood as well, so his familiarity with the area was helpful while investigating potential sites. He had insisted on filming the movie at the actual site rather than using a different location and then editing it to seem like New Bedford.
The director also wanted to employ computer graphics as little as possible, if at all possible. The filmmaker decided to film the cast and crew in the middle of the ocean when it came to underwater photography. It’s been reported that every scene on the seas was filmed there; there isn’t a single computer-generated scene with water in it. A few of the film’s sequences were shot on the boat of a friend of Helgeland’s family, who gave the actors a taste of the life they would soon be portraying on screen by taking them fishing for 10 days prior to the start of filming. In one of the early scenes, the Coast Guard is actually a Cape Cod-based Coast Guard unit.
With all of this in mind, it becomes evident that even though the story and its characters are made up, Helgeland’s experiences as a young man aboard a fishing boat serve as a strong basis for the narrative. He drew every detail of the movie from his knowledge of commercial fishing and the people who depend on it for their livelihood. We may argue that he was successful in portraying that as truthfully as possible based on the way the movie came out.
