A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

The Evaluation System Reviews by Title Reviews by Date

Reviews from Video Reviews of the Classics Personal Background

Title: The Perfect Storm

Date Viewed: 7/7/00

Details:

George Clooney

Mark Wahlberg

Diane Lane

Karen Allen

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Score: James Horner

Score: +

The Review: From the book by journalist Sebastian Junger (1997), based loosely on the lives of the Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing community; a tragedy about the fate of the swordfish boat Andrea Gail in a major North Atlantic storm late in 1991.

Three threads are well interwoven: the viewpoint of the Andrea Gail, its skipper Billy Tyne (by Clooney) and crew as they encounter the freak storm; the strain on the crew's family, friends and town-folk as they wait on shore for any snippet of news; and following a Coast Guard rescue attempt of a sailboat foundering in the same storm. The character of Linda Greenlaw (by Mastrantonio), another skipper in pursuit of swordfish who has written eloquently about the profession, appears sporadically.

Excellent, moody score by Horner, who also did Titanic and Braveheart; the resonances are quite similar. His themes and orchestrations seem well fitted to tragedies.

Pretty good special effects -- quite a lot of computational power went into simulating fractal, bumpy water! The only noticeable flaws were the cargo vessels shown bouncing around to illustrate the force and intensity of the seas, which indeed looked like miniature toys.

Back to the chronological list of reviews