December 12, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2009, in Clearwater, Florida, and in the Gulf of Mexico, the dramatic film “Not Without Hope” (based on true events) features a predominantly white and African American cast of characters (with a few Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Four male friends (two of whom are National Football League players) go on a fishing boat trip in the Gulf of Mexico and experience a disaster when their boat capsizes during a storm, and they become lost at sea.
Culture Audience: “Not Without Hope” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and suspenseful dramas about trying to survive while trapped in a large body of water.
Despite some scenes with corny dialogue, “Not Without Hope” is a gripping “based on a true story” drama about four men who got trapped during a storm in the Gulf of Mexico after a boating accident in 2009. This catastrophic disaster takes place about 15 minutes into this two-hour movie, so there isn’t much time to get to know the main characters before they have to fight for their lives. However, “Not Without Hope” has enough suspense and solid portrayals of the main characters for the movie to have an impact on viewers.
Directed by Joe Carnahan, “Not Without Hope” was co-written by Carnahan and E. Nicholas Mariani. The movie’s screenplay is adapted from the 2010 memoir “Not Without Hope” by Nick Schuyler and Jere Longman. Nick Schuyler is one of the main characters in the movie, so viewers who are already aware of this best-selling book and the widely reported story of the rescue will already know that Schuyler survived this horrible ordeal. However, this review will not reveal what happened to the other three men who went on this fateful trip, in case viewers who don’t know might want to see the movie and find out that way.
“Not Without Hope” begins by showing a glimpse of the disaster to come. During a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, four men have been at sea for 13 hours and are clinging to an overturned boat and chanting their athlete training pep talk: “I get strong. You get strong. We get strong.” It’s their way of trying to keep up their courage in a situation that can kill any of them. (“Not Without Hope” was actually filmed in Malta.)
The four men live in or near Clearwater, Florida. They all have backgrounds as football players. During the course of the movie, one of the men reveals that he doesn’t know how to swim. For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.
The four men are:
- Nick Schuyler (played by Zachary Levi), a 25-year-old personal trainer based in Clearwater, played football for the University of South Florida (USF). He is shown in the movie as being the trainer of the two NFL players who went on this fishing trip. At the time of the boat accident, Nick was engaged to a woman named Paula (played by Floriana Lima), who is depicted in the movie as the first person who wants to report the men missing. Nick is sarcastic and very self-confident. He is the one most likely in the group to inspire others not to give up hope.
- Marquis Cooper (played by Quentin Plair), a 26-year-old linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is just days away from moving to Oakland because he is switching teams to play for the Oakland Raiders. (This relocation is a contrivance for the movie because by the time this boating accident happened in real life, Cooper had already played for the Raiders.) Marquis is married to Rebekah Cooper (played by Jessica Blackmore), and they have a daughter named Delaney Cooper (played by Forgiveness Miracle Nayina), who is about 4 or 5 years old. Marquis is a devoted family man and all-around good guy.
- Corey Smith (played by Terrence Terrell), a 29-year-old defensive end, is a free agent who has played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the San Francisco 49ers and the Detroit Lions. Smith is a bachelor with no children. He is fun-loving, gregarious, and the most likely to take on the biggest physical challenges.
- Will Bleakley (played by Marshall Cook), a 25-year-old financial advisor, played football for USF. He is the most sensitive and insecure friend in the group. Will and Nick met each other in sixth grade but didn’t become best friends until they were on the USF football team together. In the movie, Will got laid off (because of recession downsizing) from wealth management company Smith & Barney the day before the fishing trip. In real life, Bleakley was employed by an auto shop owned by his parents at the time of the fishing trip. Will is a bachelor with no children. Will is trying to get over a recent breakup with a girlfriend who dumped him because she wanted to get married, but Will feels he’s not ready for marriage.
Early scenes in the movie show the four friends and Paula gathered at the Cooper house in Clearwater for a barbeque. They spend the night at the house because they plan to go on the fishing trip early the next morning, on February 28, 2009. They will be using Corey’s boat, which is a 21-foot single-engine boat, and plan to meet him at the dock the next morning. (In real life, the boat belonged to Cooper, not Smith.)
Unfortunately, for the four friends, they didn’t check the weather report before going on this fishing trip, which will be about 50 miles from Clearwater in the Gulf of Mexico. Their loved ones find out too late that a storm is headed to the area where the men will be fishing. By the time their loved ones called to warn them about the storm, the men’s cell phones were too far away to get signals.
Will is depicted as the one who is the most reluctant to take the trip because he’s concerned that the boat is too small for them. However, the other men tease him by implying that he’s fearful wimp. Nick, Marquis and Corey all think that because they are tall and strong (Will is the shortest and least muscular of the four men), they can handle whatever comes their way. Nick agrees to go on the trip after he nervously asks if the boat has an emergency radio, and Corey shows Will that the boat has this type of radio.
Despite their bravado, there are signs that these guys aren’t as knowledgeable and experienced fishermen as they would like to think they are. In addition to not checking the weather reports before going on the trip, they didn’t take into account that they might not be able to get cell phone signals in the part of Gulf of Mexico where they are headed. Corey is so ill-prepared for this fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico’s rough waters, he’s wearing open-toe sandals.
When the men see the storm headed their way, they immediately start to leave. The problem is that their anchor gets stuck on a shipwreck debris below. They try gunning the engine to break free of the anchor, but it just ends up capsizing the boat. It isn’t until much later that they think about cutting the anchor’s rope so that boat can move. By then, the boat has already capsized and is too heavy to turn over.
The only chance of survival is to cling to the boat. There are drinks and packaged food inside the boat. The boat also has a flare. The movie shows if the stranded men are able to use any of these items.
Nick is wearing a bright orange L.L. Bean jacket from that he got as a gift from his mother Marcia Schuyler (played by JoBeth Williams), who is depicted in the movie as a driving force in getting answers from authorities during the search efforts. Before the fishing trip, Nick’s friends teased him about how “loud” the jacket was, but in the midst of this storm, Nick’s brightly colored jacket suddenly looks like a helpful way to be seen in the dark.
The U.S. Coast Guard gets involved, with Captain Timothy Close (played by Josh Duhamel) in charge of the search mission, but the problem is the storm has caused low visibility and endangers the searchers. The search is called off for several hours until there is better visibility. The movie depicts the first 48 hours of the search. During this time, Captain Close enlists the help of the U.S.S. Tornado, led by Lieutenant Commander Patrick Peschka (played by Leeshon Alexander), who only has a few minutes of dialogue in the movie.
The movie has some hokey moments, such as near the beginning of the film, before the fishing trip, Marquis makes some rambling comments to Nick about how Marquis feels like Marquis “belongs to the sea.” Later, when the four men go missing, and the storm gets worse, Captain Close says: “This is about to get real fucked, real fast.”
Clearly, “Not Without Hope” is not a movie that will be nominated for major awards. But it’s a very compelling film that has mostly realistic visual effects in its recreation of the Gulf of Mexico. (There are only a few scenes of the movie where it was obviously filmed as “green screen” in a studio.) The movie never loses sight of the humanity in the story, which is why “Not Without Hope” is worth watching.
Because the movie is told mainly from Nick’s perspective, he and his loved ones get most of the scenes that show how the stranded men and their loved ones coped with this crisis. Marquis’ wife Rebekah has some “worried wife at home” scenes, but Nick’s mother Marcia and Nick’s fiancée Paula are the loved ones shown doing the most in communicating during the search mission.
Nick’s father Stuart, nicknamed Stu (played by James Martin Kelly), doesn’t live with Marcia. It’s implied that Stu and Marcia are divorced, because he’s barely in the movie. The families of Will and Corey are not seen in the movie at all, although there’s an emotionally moving scene where Will mentions his parents.
Perhaps the most unrealistic thing about “Not Without Hope” is the actors playing the four stranded men look too old to be in their 20s. Levi was in his mid-40s when he filmed this movie. However, the chemistry between the actors is good enough to make it believable that their characters are close friends. Duhamel’s portrayal of Captain Close is as someone who has a “take charge” personality where he wants to control the narrative in the media’s reporting of this search mission, and he wants to be perceived as a compassionate hero.
Is “Not Without Hope” a faith-based movie? Not really. Although praying and God are mentioned several times, there’s also a lot of cursing in the film (the word “fuck” is said many times) that would not be in a traditional faith-based movie. In addition, Nick openly says he thinks that God does not exist during a certain part of the movie. By the end of the film, there are no indications that he’s suddenly converted to believing in God, even though there’s a scene where Marcia and Paula pray together to bring Nick and his friends back home safely.
“Not Without Hope” mostly succeeds because of how it’s an absorbing portrayal of the tension-filled and tough aspects of this crisis that have as much to do with the physical difficulties as well as the emotional challenges. In addition to the possibility of drowning, there are also other dangers, such as hypothermia, dehydration, starvation, getting injured, and encountering sharks. The trauma also leads to emotional despair and the inability to think clearly. “Not Without Hope” is ultimately a bittersweet film that doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but even people who might not like the movie have to admit that “Not Without Hope” isn’t boring.
Inaugural Entertainment released “Not Without Hope” in U.S. cinemas on December 12, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on January 6, 2026.