The Perfect Storm

I got off to a bad start with The Perfect Storm and I think that tainted my enjoyment of the whole film. It starts with a woman dreaming of an impending disaster at sea. Her husband is a fisherman and is out there somewhere, and she's feeling insecure. Then, when the fleet of fishing ships arrives home, they, and many others are reunited. The fishermen begin unloading their catch which seems to consist mainly of huge swordfish. They then proceed to weigh the fish, and seem very excited about who has managed to catch the heaviest one. My problem is that the sight of grown men and women getting excited about killing animals always makes me sick. I understand that the fishing industry makes work for people and feeds people and all that, but I can't help being disgusted by the sight of fish being ripped apart and stuffed with ice. So, for me personally, this film was already bad after only ten minutes. The basic story is that, having not caught enough fish, the captain of one of the boats (George Clooney) decides to go out again and this time he's determined to bring back enough fish to make some decent money from. He'll be taking along the same crew as before, including the husband of the insecure woman, who goes even though she begs him not to.

So, as is usual with disaster movies, we are now introduced to a diverse group of characters most of whom are destined to die together. These characters are uninteresting and some of them are just plain annoying, like the two who keep bickering like kids, and the captain who is obsessed with catching as much fish as possible no matter what the cost. It seems that this kind of film always has to have at least one character who is determined to kill all the others through greed. In the end, all the characters on the boat turn out to be just as stupid. When faced with the decision to either sail through a hurricane or turn back, they vote to sail through it, because otherwise they won't get home before all the fish go rotten. They don't seem to realise that driving through a hurricane is likely to get them all killed. Well, it was necessary for the story, and to enable us to see endless special effects of waves. Now, granted, these special effects are spectacular and extremely convincing, but there are only so many raging waves that the eye can watch during the course of an evening - after that it gets bored. And bored is the operative word here. I found the film boring. Even without all the dead fish to annoy me, I still wouldn't have been too thrilled. There's all these enormous waves lashing around and helicopters battling to save people, and the music is racing along, and I'm bored. Something must be wrong. Maybe it's me.