30 Second Bottom Line: A crew of six commercial fishermen goes after a load of swordfish at the end of the season when seas can be at their worst. When the ship's ice machine breaks down with 60,000 pounds of fish on board, they have the choice of going through the storm and make it back to port for a great payday, or take the safe way home, which means throwing away the fish and coming home busted.
Story Line: The crew of the Andrea Gail chooses to ride into the storm that costs them their lives. Based upon a best-selling non-fiction novel by Sebastian Junger, the film introduces us to the lives of the crew members who will be on-board, and those who will wait for them to return. After a poor catch in the fall of 1991, Captain Billy Tyne (George Clooney) decides to take his fishing boat out of Gloucester, Mass. for one more trip during the season. The trips are 30 days each so there is very little time to get a crew and properly plan for the new outing. No one is happy about leaving their loved ones and friends so quickly but because they need the money, they go.
The fishing begins slowly and it looks like this could also be a low yield trip. Billy decides they need to go to the Flemish Cap, in the North Atlantic, which is known for its abundance of fish and rough weather. The haul is great, but they must stop when they realize the icemaker is broken and it can not be repaired at sea. Bad weather is on the horizon but collectively the crew decides to try and save the catch by going through, rather than around the storm.
Meanwhile, there is a luxury sailboat, which is already in the heavy wake of the storm. They are fighting for their lives and the US Coast Guard comes to rescue them. These scenes are so powerful that they almost steal the story of the Andrea Gail and its crew of six. We get an idea of what the Andrea Gail has yet to see and there's true meaning to the phrase, "…weather the storm."
Murph (John C. Reilly) is a likable fisherman with a chip on his shoulder; he wonders about the breakup of his marriage and he wants to spend time with his son. Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne), is a Jamaican who is on the ship because he's looking for money during the slow season at home. Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg) has a bad feeling about the trip; he's in love with Chris (Diane Lane), whom he wants to get back to, and he plans to give up fishing. Bobby reminds me of the Woody Allen character in Small Time Crooks; he is doing something he does not want to do, when all he wants to do is go to Florida and live a simple life.
Linda Greenlaw (Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is a successful boat captain who is a shining star in a job where there are very few women. She tries to encourage Billy not to ride out the storm because the weather people "…are running out of scary words to describe the situation." As things unfurl at sea, Chris is the focal point of how she and the townspeople feel about the emerging storm, the eventual rescue efforts and finally the cessation of the search for the Andrea Gail.
At a radio station, the meteorologist sees a unique set of storm fronts, which may converge, which he calls "the perfect storm." That is the coming together of immense storms that most weathermen will never see in their lifetime of work.
Billy and his crew are brave men who are just trying to make a living; they are smart and hard working. When you look at a land map that shows distance lines very close together, you know that means steep or cliff like. On a sea map, it means waves that tend to be Grand Canyon like in nature. Riding into one of those waves could cause problems even the Queen Mary could not handle.
Tell Me More About It: A rogue wave is, as the name implies, one that is greater than the sum of the parts. It can be so strong that riding into it can flip the boat, trapping the crew inside to drown as the air is replaced by water. Crashing seas can break the windows and flood the control area or engine room and electrocute the crew.
There are many things that can sink a small boat in such a storm. With the weight of the fuel and fish, trying to turn around and head out of the storm can result in being capsized. High winds can cause a knock down or roll over, from which the boat does not recover. A knock down is the mast laying flat on the sea and a roll over means the mast points at the bottom of the ocean but comes all the way around to point to the sky again.
For director Wolfgang Peterson, Das Boot remains his signature movie and the definitive film about danger in the oceans. He does a fine job in The Perfect Storm with numerous scenes of the Andrea Gail and in particular the helicopter rescue of the luxury sail boat.
The use of CGI in a number of set up scenes, where nothing much is happening, detracted somewhat from the film. The best CGI are those you are not aware of.
I read the book, The Perfect Storm, before I saw the film; and shortly before the film was released, I read the book again. The book is so focused and informative, that it's easy to see why it needed to be made into a movie. Small boat commercial fishermen are the cowboys of today
Ten thousand fishing crew members have died at sea from the town of Gloucester, Mass since 1623. There is a difference between thinking you are going to die and knowing it. What makes The Perfect Storm special is the spiritual connection you make with these men as they come to terms with the consequences of prior decisions in their lives when they know that they will die at sea. At just over two hours, the film is perfectly balanced with character development and lots of action. If the studio thought audiences had the attention span to see a three-hour movie, like Tom Hanks's The Green Mile, and had they developed the characters a little more, what was a near miss to perfection could have been the perfect movie. The Perfect Storm is a disaster film of epic proportions brought to human scale.
Mini Filmography
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