When making a movie in which the protagonist is not a person but a surging, monster storm, you must hurl yourself into the concept with full force. Otherwise, you will be left with a whirlwind of special effects and some hurriedly pieced-together secondary characters. Unfortunately, this is the mistake that Wolfgang Petersen has made in his rousing disaster movie, "The Perfect Storm."
Based on the book by Sebastian Junger, "The Perfect Storm" chronicles the story of a rare weather event that wreaked havoc upon the northeastern U.S. coast in October of 1991 and its effects on a fishing boat named the Andrea Gail. Disappointed by his previous fishing expedition, blue-collar fishing-boat captain Bill Tyne (George Clooney) decided to take a money-hungry crew of five to find an ocean cache of swordfish in a distant fishing spot known as the Flemish Cap. During their trip, they became caught in "The Perfect Storm" and were forced to fight for their lives in an attempt to escape the colossal hurricane.
In his recreation of the storm, Petersen uses computer generated special effects to bring the horror of its fervent winds, pelting rain and massive waves to life. Atypically for a summer movie, he admirably succeeds here, using astonishing graphics to add to the film's power. If they were not so frightening, the blue and navy color, frothing, and rumbling of the storm's rolling waves could be considered beautiful.
Every scene of the ferocious ocean is eye-candy; suddenly, the quaint houses of the Massachusetts fishing town become disappointing when compared to the incredible rendered action on the sea. Water seems to be forcing its way through the screen into the audience with the amount of gallons blown into the actors' faces throughout the movie. Even the scenes in which filming limitations forced Petersen to generate actors digitally (watch carefully during the steel panel-reattachment scene) are so convincing that viewers will have a hard time remembering that they are not watching actual footage. Even rarer for a summer movie, "The Perfect Storm" could have benefited from a few additional special effects. A few extra scenes of the boat enveloped in horrifying, enormous waves are certainly called for.
These effects turn what could have been uninteresting cinematography into a beautifully photographed film. Watching the Andrea Gail navigate among the huge waves is a delight, and the shots of the captain trying to repair the boat with a blowtorch while clinging to a swaying beam are impressive. In addition, the editing of the action sequences also is outstanding. One scene in which a Coast Guard helicopter attempts to save some stray sailors bound for Bermuda with a metal cage keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. The scenes in which a crew member is ripped off the boat by a fishing hook and another in which a Coast Guard boat tries to pull some sailors out of the ocean also are remarkable.
Disappointingly, Petersen surrounds all of this quality filmmaking with painfully manipulative expository sequences, silly dialogue and a rude and exaggerated soundtrack by James Horner ("Titanic"). Petersen spends the first 45 minutes of the film trying (but failing) to make us care for the characters so that we find ourselves invested in them when inevitable disaster strikes.
After this, he smartly spends most of his time impressing us with the real main character, the storm, but by then, it's too late. The captain has already vaguely pretended to be interested in another fisherwoman. Crew member Bobby (Mark Wahlberg) has shown his love for a girlfriend obviously too-excited about his upcoming return to allow for the possibility of his actually returning. And the worst of it all is crew member Bugsy's three-second conversation with a woman in a bar who then decides to see bid him farewell during his departure, as if she actually cares about him. None of it rings true, no one ever has anything interesting to say, and all of it feels violating and rehashed. Although it would not be appropriate for most character-dependent movies, in this case, if Petersen really knew what he were doing, he would have removed all of these false character development sequences.
The soundtrack, which is designed to be inspiring, instead detracts from the storm and constantly screams in our ears what no viewer ever wants to hear: "This is only a movie!" The sounds of the howling wind and crashing of the storm were music enough, without the sappy score that Horner brings us.
There is a perfect image near the end of the film in which we see a stranded sailor from afar -- a tiny head floating in an ocean of gorgeous special effects. In this shot, cinematographer John Seale shows us he understands the theme of this film by showing an expanse of the powerful sea with a tiny representation of mankind in its clutches. If only Petersen had taken this photograph and modeled his entire film after it, "The Perfect Storm" would have been a stunning, action-packed portrait of man's struggle with nature. Instead, we are left with a conglomeration of (admittedly spectacular) special effects and unnecessary manipulation.
