Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 1.5
And so the summer of mediocre movies continues. Wait ... I shouldn't say mediocre, as this certainly has some fantastic moments ... but they're all in the last half-hour of the movie. Based on Sebastian Junger's compelling true-life account of six Massachusetts swordfishermen who go in search of large fish - and large paychecks - but never come back. Director Peterson obviously uses Moby Dick as his inspiration, with Billy Tyne (played by George Clooney) being the obsessed Ahab searching for a multitude of swordfish, finds it, but has it yanked away from him, like a carrot on a stick, by God's colossal freak-of-nature, an out-of-control convergence of hurricanes and a cold front that's been dubbed "The Perfect Storm of 1991." Once the storm steps into the picture, you brace yourself, as the crew at Industrial Light & Magic create one amazing spectacle that's monstrous and powerful, and in itself worth the price of admission. But the scenes with drama feel contrived and predictable, and the first hour - setting everything up - is gimmicky and only constructed to make more of a dramatic impact at the end (the rivalry between John C. Reilly and another member of the ship is never completely explained; the relationships between Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane, Clooney and fellow fisherwoman Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Reilly and his son, etc etc. feel planted). Also, the dialogue really needs a kick in the ass. If only they'd spent the kind of attention on the people instead of the storm, perhaps they'd have something more than what they do: another natural disaster picture (see: Twister, Volcano).
