Director Wolfgang Peterson has had more than
sufficient practise at at-sea disaster movies, being
the director of Das Boot (the boat), one of the best
ever war/disaster films ever made.
So it was with intense disappointment that I saw the
preview for The Perfect Storm. The film it was
advertising appeared, so said the review, to have cruddy dialogue ('I have
a bad feeling about this') and bad acting by George
stud-without-acting-talent-but-with-big-ego Clooney.
In fact, I was quite
happy not going until someone
paid for my ticket, and I was very pleasantly
surprised.
The true story concerns fishermen on the final trip of
the season, whose boat gets caught in the middle of a
freak storm. The film starts poorly enough, with the
normal Hollywood cliches, such as the divorced father
who hardly ever sees his young son, and a young
couple, where the husband (Mark Wahlberg) is always
working rather than being at home.
But all these faults can easily be forgiven by the
last hour. The action sequences are absolutely
terrific, and Clooney and Wahlberg deliver fantastic
performances. The whole film manages to be just the
right length (any longer, and it would have become too
deja-vu; any shorter, and the plot/characters would
have been under-developed), and the emotional scenes,
such as they are, steer clear of over-sentimentality.
It's rare to see
a big-budget blockbuster deliver good
quality entertainment. The Perfect Storm blew me
away.
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