The Perfect Storm film review

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THE PERFECT STORM

In October 1991, the fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts, experienced the full wrath of Mother Nature when a freak meteorological event produced the fiercest storm in modern history.

Director Wolfgang Petersen has fashioned this heroic true story (as chronicled in Sebastian Junger's best-seller) into a star-laden blockbuster, employing computer power to whip up the terrifying titular storm.

George Clooney plays Billy Tyne, captain of the Andrea Gail who has been plagued by bad luck at sea and is on poor run of catches. Frustrated by the huge hauls of the Hannah Boden, captained by Linda Greenlaw (Mary Ann Mastrantonio), Tyne decides to head back out to sea for the Flemish Cap, a remote area renowned for its rich fishing prospects. He is joined by a number of his regular crew including Billy Shatford (Mark Wahlberg), Dale Murphy (John C Reilly), David Sullivan (William Fichtner), Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne) and Michael Moran (John Hawkes).

Sure enough, Tyne's luck changes for the better at the Flemish Cap and the Andrea Gail catches a full haul. Buoyed by the money that awaits them back home, the crew sets off back to Gloucester, but disturbing weather patterns hamper their progress, and they soon find themselves battling against 100ft waves and 120mph winds that threaten to tear the boat apart.

For a dramatisation which plays so heavily on human loss and tragedy - Petersen dedicates the film to the brave fishermen who have risked and lost their lives at sea - The Perfect Storm is depressingly uninvolving.

Each member of the Andrea Gail crew is painted into his own neat little box - the veteran captain who rediscovers his golden touch in the nick of time, the kind-hearted first-hand working himself to the bone for love, the doting estranged father and the outsider who saves his supposed nemesis from an early watery grave.

Characterisation and plausible relationships evidently went overboard from Bill Whitliff's screenplay and sunk without a trace. By the time the storm finally hits, it's impossible to conjure sympathy, fear or trepidation for the men as the boat is battered by monstrous CGI waves. We simply don't know them enough to care.

Clooney and Wahlberg use their natural charisma and charm to general some on-screen chemistry and cope well with the physical aspects of the roles, and Lane has limited appeal as Wahlberg's fraught girlfriend. Other cast members simply make up the numbers.