Hollywood studio executives see their big budget products almost exclusively as an escapist entertainment, so it is very unlikely that an ambitious project designed as potential summer blockbuster, would be based on true events. It is even less likely that those true events would have occurred in recent past and have rather bleak ending. But Warner Bros. did exactly that by investing 120 million US$ into The Perfect Storm, 2000 disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen.
The film is based on the eponymous bestselling book by Sebastian Junger, which described events that occurred in late October 1991. Three different air masses over Western Atlantic – each of them capable of creating huge storms – converged due to phenomenon that occurs once in a century and created devastating hurricane that would cause death and destruction on the shores of Northeastern USA. The plot begins before those events in small fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Andrea Gail, fishing boat under command of Captain Billy Tyne (played by George Clooney), has just returned to harbour but its owner Bob Brown (played by Michael Ironside) isn’t happy with its poor catch of swordfish. He is, on the other hand, quite happy with the crew of Hannah Boden, boat commanded by Tyne’s rival Linda Greenlaw (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who always returns to port with her storage full. Tyne takes it very personally and decides to sail again and prove everyone that he is true sea wolf. His crew agrees to follow him merely for the money, most notably young Bobby Stratford (played by Mark Wahlberg) who desperately want to start new life with girlfriend Christina Cotter (played by Diane Lane). Although their mothers, wives and family members sense danger and beg them not to go, Tyne and his men bravely sail away. The waters where they usually fish are empty, so Tyne is forced to take route towards remote area. They indeed catch a lot of fish, but the ship’s refrigerator breaks down, so Andrea Gail must rush back towards the shore before the catch gets spoiled. Problem is that his route just crosses path of the upcoming storm and Tyne must decide whether to go through it. Tyne is convinced that his ship could handle it, but when his radio antenna gets damaged, he can’t receive warnings about true dimensions of storm he and his crew are about to face.
The Perfect Storm was often described as “working man’s Titanic” and the comparison of this film with Cameron’s hit is quite justified. Both film deal with real life maritime disaster and both have similar two-part narrative structure. In the first part we are introduced to characters and which features a lot of sentimentality and melodrama, while the second part features non-stop action and impressive special effects. What makes those two films different is Wolfgang Petersen, German director who reached international fame with similarly-themed Das Boot two decades earlier. Petersen insisted on maximum realism in order to compensate for typical Hollywood pathos and sentimentality. The cast came to Gloucester to meet with the friends and family of people they were about to play and Mark Wahlberg even lived there for three months. The first part of the film, during which we are introduced to small fishing town where the life is hard and fortunes often depend on unpredictable weather. Blue collar protagonists, which actually have to use hard physical labour to make ends meet, are quite rare in Hollywood films, but Petersen here got a very good cast. George Clooney is very convincing as a stubborn leader whose bad decision would cost him and his crew dearly and, therefore, very far from the image of charming heroes Clooney was playing at the time. Wahlberg is also good as young crew member and same can be said of character actors like like John C. Reilly and William Fichtner. Especially moving is the performance of John Hawkes who plays Michael “Bugsy” Moran, man who serves as something of a comic relie in the crew of the doomed boat.
All the good work Petersen did in the first part is compromised by some unfortunate creative decision in the second part. Instead of being focused on “Andrea Gail” and its sad fate, Petersen suddenly introduces subplots about Mistral, sailing yacht owned by rich Alexander McAnally III (played by Bob Gunton) that got caught in the storm, and US Coast Guard helicopter that tried to give aid to those vessels. Although those subplots provide few impressive action scenes (and some sort of happy ending this film otherwise lacked), in the end they make The Perfect Storm lose focus and become unnecessarily overlong. The ending of the film is overly sentimental, yet it won’t provide emotional catharsis Petersen hoped for. However, mostly humanistic approach to the characters and more respect for real history than usual for big budget Hollywood films is something that should be commended. The audience at the time agreed with it, making The Perfect Storm one of big hits of its time. Viewers who watch it today are likely to agree too.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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