The Perfect Storm

December 11, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 129 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Movies For Guys’ Original Review of the Theatrical Release

The Perfect Storm

Back in October of 1991, Hurricane Grace made her way up thru the Atlantic. In the North Atlantic another storm was already brewing. Meanwhile a “noreaster” was piping in lots of wind and cold air from Canada. What happened when these three weather patterns collide is rather remarkable. They started to feed off of each other and created one of the strongest storms ever recorded.

During this storm, the Atlantic off the coast of the northeastern U.S. and around the Great Banks featured waves higher than a 10 story building, 140+ mph winds and generally some of the nastiest conditions imaginable to a seaman. This is the true story about a crew of commercial fisherman who were stupid enough to be out in this mess.

The Andrea Gail is a commercial fishing vessel with a crew of five plus Captain Billy Tyne, played here by George Clooney. And she is the unfortunate boat who gets caught in The Perfect Storm.

The movie spends the entire time leading up to the storm trying to make us care about these morons who are stupid enough to be out there. As a result this thing takes on a bit of a chick flick element while they spend all of this time focusing on the crew’s relationships, family, etc. Consequently it is also very slow until the storm starts.

However, once that storm kicks in, this movie has some of the best weather effects ever seen. The visuals are absolutely outstanding. The storms in movies like Twister are nothing compared to the effects here with the winds and high seas.

So what you end up with in this movie is a chick flick that is dead slow for at least the first hour, but concludes with some intense storm scenes and absolutely outstanding effects. We gave it 3 stars as the effects make it worth seeing, however it just doesn’t compare with some of the other 4 and 5 star summer releases out there competing for your movie dollar right now.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, DVD, Diane Lane, Drama, George Clooney, John C Reilly, Karen Allen, Mark Wahlberg, PG-13