The Perfect Storm

Reviewed by: Suad Bejtovic, Bosnian Movie Critic

Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen

Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Making a movie based on a book is always a tough task, and it gets even worse when the book was based on a true story. Perfect Storm tackles that 100-foot wave bravely, but still capsizes on a few levels. The true story is about six seamen from a small fishing community of Gloucester in Massachusetts, a community that lost over 10,000 men to the sea over the past four hundred years or so. The seamen are led by Captain Billy Tyne (Clooney), who's had his share of bad fishing luck lately. In the wake of a giant storm, he decides to challenge the sea again, hoping for a big score. However, the giant storm collides with two other giant storms, and becomes one of the worst natural disasters of our time. The boat, "Andrea Gail" finds itself in the eye of what the meteorologists call the perfect storm.

Much publicized special effects in Perfect Storm are truly special, and highlight well the movie's most intense moments. Huge waves give the impression of massive bodies of water colliding, fighting for supremacy, oblivious to the insignificant little dot that represents the life or death of our six heroes. The scenes on Andrea Gail are fast-paced, well acted, and interesting to watch, whether it is the fight between two sailors, a rescue, a shark attack or a near-mutiny, and all that occurs even before the storm has hit. It becomes obvious that Clooney and Wahlberg, together again after Three Kings, are running the show, developing a certain kind of a male bond, but the other characters onboard are also very vivid. Among others, there is William Fichtner ("Drowning Mona") who plays Sully, a character of dubious morals, but with a strong sense of companionship and John C. Reilly ("Magnolia") as Murph, the ultimate good guy, who almost works as a woman of the ship, protecting the interests of the community and the vessel on which it temporarily resides. Clooney is not entirely convincing as the veteran sea wolf, but Wahlberg still has the effortless magnetic power that put him on the map in Boogey Nights.

However, Perfect Storm is only a mediocre to average movie, because it just wouldn't stay focused for more than five minutes at the time. It sets up the atmosphere rather slowly, but colorfully, with many shore-based characters and relationships. Once Andrea Gail sails, though, the story goes in several different directions. One storyline is somewhat justified with the TV weather guy getting almost sadistical pleasure with the prospect of colliding masses of turbulent air, but the whole story about the small sailboat headed to Bermuda and the Marines on a rescue mission, could have been left for another movie. Then, out of a not-so-blue sky, we see a sight of a supertanker getting thrown around, containers falling over, but that sight shows up two or three times and lasts a total of maybe one minute. It seems that Perfect Storm would have been a much better movie if those 20 minutes of distractions would be cut out of it. It would have also been much better if the director Petersen, no stranger to aquatic spectacles ("Das Boot"), added another 30 minutes of footage described in the book. But, as it is, books and movies are two different mediums and should not be compared.