With its near-complete absence of irony, The Perfect Storm sometimes risks collapsing under the weight of its own sincerity. But this natural disaster movie’s stubborn refusal to turn its blue-collar heroes into types makes for a satisfactory if somewhat two-dimensional experience.
The film based on Sebastien Junger’s true story best seller, is set in Gloucester Massachusetts, a 370 year old fishing town where deaths at sea are a part of life. The work is hard, the pay unpredictable as the next catch, and a veteran swordfish-boat captain named Billy Tine is on a loosing streak. Desperate to turn his luck around, at season’s end in late October 1991 he takes a crew of five into dangerous but promising waters.
The weather, in monumental fashion, proves even more fickle than fish. The Andrea Gail’s run coincides with the worst storm imaginable, a convergence of three bullying blows including Hurricane Grace. As loved ones on land await word of their fate, Tine and crew put their heads down and try to push through the howling winds and hundred foot waves.
Wolfgang Peterson, who long ago directed the classic submarine drama Das Boot, revisits similar territory with a script by Bill Wittliff. Its about as elemental as you get-six men on a storm tossed little rust bucket-and Peterson also spends considerable time detailing nighttime Coast Guard efforts to rescue the helpless occupants of a little sailboat bound for Bermuda.
Perfect Storm is a solid production, from the computer generated long shots of heaving seas to the gritty realism of the Andrea Gail’s wheelhouse, mess and hold. This is no corporate factory trawler: While they locate schools using sonar, the crew bait their setines by hand and drag the big, powerful swordfish aboard with spear-like gaffs. It’s a Hollywood rarity: an extended, credible portrait of working people at work.
All of the Andrea Gail’s story after the storm hits and the radio dies is fictional, but the characters are based on real people. Peterson’s fishermen are decent, rough hewn guys. Each has a defining flaw or passion. The acting is good and efforts at characterization are more than token.
While it has elements of docudrama including the Coast Guard narrative and cutaways to distant wave-bullied cargo ships, The Perfect Storm does occasionally lapse into sentimentality. Peterson seems incapable in dialogue scenes of showing someone other than the character who’s speaking, making for literalism that is frequently refreshing, sometimes dulling. Those seeking symbolism and ironic distance are advised to seek elsewhere. Perfect Storm wants to put salt water up your nose and a tear in your eye.