The Perfect Storm Review
by "David N. Butterworth" (dnb AT dca DOT net)July 12th, 2000
THE PERFECT STORM
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth
no stars (out of ****)
Oh my dear goodness me.
Q: What's the difference between "The Perfect Storm" and the worst movie ever made?
A: Not much.
It begins with big, bland titles and the cloying strains of James Horner's obsequious score starting up, a simple refrain repeated so often it gnaws its way into your cranium like a coprophagous beetle digging for dung. Yuk.
Next we're introduced to our cast of characters, a predictable weather-beaten lot with handles like Murph and Bugsy and Sully. The stubborn, macho swordboat captain (George Clooney); the inexperienced young punk (Mark Wahlberg); the burly divorcee (John C. Reilly); the token African American (Allen Payne); the troublemaker (Michael Fichtner); the scruffy one who smells like fish and can't get a woman to even look at him (John Hawkes).
It's not that we're simply introduced to these stereotypes, however. We have the intimate details of their personal lives thrust down our throats within the film's first fifteen minutes. I mean this happens *very* quickly. Why are the filmmakers in such a rush to fob us off with these hokey, trite, and laughable scenes? So that we'll care about these people as individuals once we get to the storm stuff, of course. Ironically, the latest coming attractions for "The Perfect Storm" now position the film as a personal human drama rather than a rousing action-adventure flick. Interesting.
Anyway, for the next interminable two hours we get the story. The true story. But what story? Six idiots lost at sea--*that's* the story. That's all there is. Gloucesterman Billy Tyne (Clooney) is having a run of bad luck and vows to take his Andrea Gail out for one last (and hopefully big) haul to make his quota. "I catch fish. It's what I do" he sneers at his pit boss ("Starship Troopers"' Michael Ironside). Billy's ragtag band of fishermen all need the money so they're happy to ragtag along, at least initially. Wahlberg shares a tender moment with his lovely thirtysomething girlfriend (played by Diane Lane) before he heads out beyond the Grand Banks. "Last night I dreamed that you are I were so close I couldn't tell where I ended and you began." Or something like that. I tell you the dialogue in this film must have been written by a three-year-old (although screenwriter Bill Wittliff appears to be considerably older than that). Anemic and foolish, the on-screen patter makes you want to spit.
The promotions people would have us believe that "In the Fall of 1991, an event took place that had never occurred in recorded history" but the meteorological intrigues of the plot are reduced to having a Boston weatherman (played by a bespectacled Christopher McDonald, Adam Sandler's golf opponent in "Happy Gilmore") "ooh!" and "aah!" at advancing weather patterns on his computer screen. As he traces the swirling masses on the monitor with his finger he comments to himself "This is unheard of. Hurricane Grace kicking up a fuss down here, a system rising off Sable Island there, and the Gulf Stream pushing forth a cold front over here. If these three were to collide it would be a disaster of epic proportions. It'd be the storm of the century. No wait, it'd be--dot dot dot--The Perfect Storm." Or something like that. I haven't seen a decent film yet in which a character speaks the film's title, often times to camera. I still haven't.
Once the winds whip up it's like the wreck of the Hesperus out there, with the film piling on the "suspense" by regularly flashing subtitles at the bottom of the screen. "Mistral (Plymouth, NH), 345 Miles Off Bermuda." "HMS Hermes--Halfway to Havana." "Meteorological Tracking Station U-571, Baffin Bay." And "The Flemish Cap" moments after Cap'n Billy announces they are steering towards The Flemish Cap, a remote section of sea that's barely on the map.
These reference points come so thick and fast it's as if the filmmakers expect us to have a lapful of nautical charts and are plotting the rough weather's course every step of the way. Another way the film creates "drama" is to have two of the crew members constantly battling with each other. The minute Reilly and Fichtner's characters are introduced they start bickering, trading barbs and insults--"your mother was a lobsterman!"--without explanation. Why? Because there's no other dramatic tension. Except for a sloop with Karen Allen aboard being buffeted around with another testosterone-driven male at the helm. "I don't use charts, I just go with my gut. Let's ride this one out," says Dad. Or something like that. Who are these people and what are they doing here? The men in this film give their gender a really bad rap; it's hard to care about morons.
But the women don't do any better. A bunch of them sit around the bar at the Crow's Nest in Gloucester, Maine chewing their fingernails and watching the devastation being wreaked on the television. Lane's brow is constantly furrowed. And Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who seems to have modeled her rival skipper character on Clint Eastwood, what with her growled delivery and gnarly, barnacled appearance, provides two embarrassingly heart-wrenching soliloquies, the first of which goes something like this. (On the radio to Billy): "Oh my God Billy, it's happening! You have to get out of there now. It's the mother of all storms. It's a huge epic of unfathomable proportions. It's the devil itself. You're headed right into the eye of a monster!" Or something like that (cut to two hours of our actors having buckets of water dumped over their heads). If anyone had drawn a gun in this film the trigger would have jammed.
It wasn't until a rescue helicopter flew over the choppy North Atlantic that I was reminded that Wolfgang Petersen's last film was that mega-turkey, "Air Force One."
"Lost at sea." "Petersen has missed das boot here." "This one stinks of fish" "Rough waters." "Waves of emotion." "Perfectly horrible." "The Perfect Mess." There are so many ways to describe "The Perfect Storm" but "a satisfying movie-going experience" just isn't one of them. Disastrous? Yes. An epic of tragic proportions? Sure. A tragedy of epic proportions? Absolutely. I can think of only three good things in the film: the Big Waves (courtesy Industrial Light and Magic), how expertly the cast handles tackle and bait, and Reilly's knit cap. Otherwise it's a bust.
Had I not been obligated to ride it out I would have stormed out of this one at the quarter hour mark. It would have been the right decision.
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David N. Butterworth
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