Finestkind is the passion project that Oscar winner Brian Helgeland has been working on for years. The L.A Confidential writer has put lots of love and work and it shows, sort of. Although the cast tries their best to elevate the mediocre script, it’s not enough to make this one an easy skip on your watchlist.

Jenna Ortega and Tommy Lee Jones are the best part of the movie. They elevate the mundane script to a somewhat decent level and make the movie quite bearable. They manage to steal every scene, with Jones in particular providing tons of emotional moments. If they had better source material to work with, I think their performances would be more talked about this awards season.

Production values for the film are actually quite decent. Visually, it’s bland but that lends itself to the setting of the film so I don’t mind too much. The ocean scenes are quite impressive and the scope is even more impressive considering it’s a streaming film. You really get imerssed into the setiting and it feels extremely realistic.

The script for this film is mediocre at best. It’s filled with cheesy dialogue talking about how life and death don’t matter, but it’s the in-between counting. Either that or just yelling “finestkind!” with the most hillbilly accent at random times. It takes away any redeemable qualities the film has and drags it down to a very, very low point. This is especially disappointing considering Helgeland’s previous work, which was fantastic but I guess they can’t all be winners.

Finestkind is a joke. With such a good cast, I was truly hoping for more but I am let down. It’s a lower point of TIFF ’23 for me and I wish I went and saw something else instead.