Cheap The Perfect Storm (Video) (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg) (Wolfgang Petersen) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Perfect Storm

A Great Summer Film
The Perfect Storm is an excellant motion picture. Coming from award winning director Wolfgang Petersen, who knows a thing or two about both the sea (Das Boot) and action (Airforce One)he delivers an excellant film. The story revolves around swoardfish captain Billy Tye (George Clooney) and the rest of his crew. (notabley John C. Reily and Mark Wahlberg) The film is VERY loosely based on the novel by Sebastian Junger. The movie delves into the sacrifices fisherman have to make to bring home the big catch, and the things they have to leave behind to get it. George Clooney and the rest of the cast are played to perfection. I couldn't think of a greater ensamble to play the roles. The speacial effects are also out of this world, made by Industrial Light and Magic. (ie Star Wars and The Mummy) Though there is a lack of major charcter development, due to the fact that the storm is the big draw to this film, audiences would leave dissapointed if they had spent 2 hours developing these charcters, and 15 minutes of the storm. Thats my only complaint with the film. Wolfgang follows the facts of what happened to these men in 1991, and is the perfect director for the film. The musical score, though sappy, is also good, done by Titanic famous James Horner. For a fun ride and good story, check out this movie.

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WONDERFUL SPECIAL EFFECTS, CHARACTERS COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
This is a tough movie to evaluate. Let me begin with the easy part: the hurricane special effects are incredible .... easily FIVE-plus stars. But it is not so easy to pin down the quality of the story line and characters. Sometimes, once in awhile they approach five stars ... but too often the script and characters in it become limp, descending to three star quality. Well, let me tell you why.

BASIC STORY: A fishing ships crew knowingly take a big chance by heading out to sea for commercial fishing in treacherous October. What no one can imgaine is that a very unusual weather front is combining with a hurricane to produce the most powerful storm ever heard of. But it is the screenwriter and director's job to create an interesting angle to this story. For example, what produced this special storm ... scientifically speaking? How does an experienced captain, indeed, manage to get his/her ship through a hurricane? The audience is expected to take all of these things at face value without the writer/director skillfully filling in the factual blanks.

THE PERFECT STORM is based on a true story that involved real people. But the people portrayed in this movie didn't seem to have lives outside of fishing and the coming storm. During the first hour, George Clooney and his group make speeches about how they love fishing. But why??!! John C. Reilly alone presents us with something memorable as Murph, a fisherman who sorely misses his son. Murph even loves his ex-wife. That's kind of interesting, and thereby Murph seems to be a real person. Then all during the second hour of the movie, the crew shout sailor-talk orders to one another, nearly drowned out by the screaming hurricane. Aside from struggling to keep their fishing boat afloat, the crew caught in the so-called Storm of the Century seemed to otherwise have celluloid lives.

In conclusion, the actors were certainly good at playing their roles ... but there wasn't that much to play. Their characters were two dimensional. So that's wasted talent. Most of the productive talent in this movie was expressed by the special effects director(s) who created for us the realistic spectacle of fishermen in a relatively small boat caught in a terrifying force of nature: THE PERFECT STORM.

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lukewarm
I really wanted to like this movie but it came off as a bland viewing experience. A lot of it had to do with poor casting...Clooney (IMO) is not a good actor so without a strong lead, the rest of the ensemble faltered. I don't remember much of a soundtrack-a good musical score would of greatly improved this film.
As a New Englander, I find it quite tiresome to listen to ridiculous interpretations of the local dialects. Obviously most of the actors could not speak it, so the few who tried, looked even more stupid. I would of been happy if they had spoken in their natural accents (even if by fluke, someone was from the South, per se)-at least a viewer can justify it by interpreting the character as a transplant; a horrible rendition of a dialect is just that...horrible, and it is very distracting. The hollywood adaptation of New England locals always strikes me as an insult. It seems fair to state that these filmmakers from the west coast don't know enough about the people and culture of New England either.