The Jenna Ortega Crime Thriller That You Didn't Realize Taylor Sheridan Produced

As a prolific creator, Taylor Sheridan has been behind numerous TV shows (alongside some movie screenplays) and regularly directs a number of episodes of his series. Yet he still finds the time and bandwidth to produce a few projects that aren't his creations. One of those is Brian Helgeland's crime thriller, "Finestkind," which unceremoniously came and went on Paramount+ at the end of 2023. It's especially odd the movie didn't get much fanfare back then because it features a damn good cast, including Ben Foster, Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Wallace, and Jenna Ortega, among others. Not to mention that its director was behind such classics as 1999's "Payback" with Mel Gibson and 2001's "A Knight's Tale" with the late Heath Ledger.

If you look at it a little more closely, however, you'll see it's not that surprising that it was dumped and immediately forgotten on Paramount+, which usually champions everything that Sheridan has anything to do with. "Finestkind" was practically annihilated by critics upon its release, and it didn't fare much better with audiences either. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle: Helgeland's feature isn't godawful per se, but also lacks anything outstanding to write home about.

To Brian Helgeland's credit, his film, which he also wrote, at least aims to portray a community we don't see that often in movies. Set in New Bedford, Massachusetts, "Finestkind" follows the Eldridge fisherman family: Tom (Ben Foster), his father Ray (Tommy Lee Jones), and his younger half-brother Charlie (Toby Wallace). Charlie is an unhappy college attendee who pays a visit to his brother in the hope of becoming a member of his scallop fisherman crew. Tom doesn't take him on instantly since he's unsure if this is truly what his brother wants or needs, but he eventually gives in and welcomes Charlie on his boat. But once the two sail out alongside the crew on a fishing excursion, Tom's boat suffers an internal explosion and sinks while everyone manages to escape. 

Blamed for the accident, Tom gets in a fight with his boss, who ends up firing him. That's when his distant father, Ray, approaches him and offers to captain his boat, the Finestkind. Left with not much of a choice as newly unemployed, Tom accepts the offer. Meanwhile, Charlie develops a crush on a local drug dealer named Mabel (Ortega), and before long, the film turns into a strange crime odyssey that involves illegal fishing, smuggling heroin, and unwanted troubles with local criminals. It's the kind of clichéd crime B-movie with a subpar story that video rental stores used to have an entire section for.

The cast is solid — particularly Foster, Jones, and Ortega — and they deliver as much as the material allows them, but the script loses its way pretty early and settles for half-solutions and nonsensical plot points that grant nothing but eye rolls. It's a shame because there's certainly potential in depicting this kind of working-class community of fishermen — many of them coming from broken and dysfunctional families — as they try to navigate life in a profession that's becoming increasingly harder to make a living at. But "Finestkind" completely squanders that promise eventually, and Taylor Sheridan-produced or not, winds up as a mediocre and forgettable flick that flies under the radars of most viewers for a reason.