NOT WITHOUT HOPE: Of All The True Stories, This Is One Of Them

NOT WITHOUT HOPE (DVD)

2025 / 119 min

Ketchup Entertainment

Review by Stinky the Destroyer😼

Four buddies head out to sea for an afternoon fishing trip, only to get caught in a massive storm, which capsizes their boat. One of them, Nick Schuyler, later wrote about the ordeal in Not Without Hope, the book on which this film is based. I also seem to vaguely recall this incident being national news because two of the men were NFL players.

Here, Nick’s played by Zachary Levi, which briefly had me suspecting this might be another one of those ‘inspirational’ movies he seems to enjoy doing (especially with a title like that). But the first ten minutes insist otherwise, when these guys start dropping enough expletives to make Samuel L. Jackson proud. Then again, the salty dialogue does sort of feel like a deliberate attempt to earn an R rating.

Most of the film takes place on the open sea, with the four facing giant waves, icy water, thirst, hypothermia, and in an unintentionally amusing moment, circling sharks. Back on land, Coast Guard captain Timothy Close (Josh Duhamel) leads the search, while wives and/or mothers anxiously await news regarding their missing husbands and sons. Like a lot of survival stories involving missing men, all the female roles are as thankless as being Metallica’s bass player. A shame, really, because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen JoBeth Williams in anything.

Guess who just heated up the pool.

About halfway through this ordeal, there is a scene where Nick’s buddy, Will (Marshall Cook), implores him to put his trust in God, but that’s about as inspirational as the movie gets. The rest is a bleak depiction of four buddies suffering, which becomes kind of an endurance test after awhile. Not only is the film too long, there isn’t enough character exposition for us to be all that invested in them. It’s almost as if someone assumed the crisis alone would keep things engaging…you know, being a true story and all. For some viewers, like those who enjoyed the book, maybe that's enough, since they can fill in the blanks left by the movie.

Earnest performances help, especially Quentin Plair as Marquis Cooper, one of the NFL players. Elsewhere, the technical merits are solid and the open-ocean scenes are fairly convincing (save for those goofy shark fins). Not Without Hope periodically grabs the viewer with some good action sequences, but is ultimately one of those movies you watch without really feeling anything.