Perfect Storm, The

The Perfect Storm, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 130 minutes, Warner Brothers, 2000. PG-13 for language and scenes of peril.

Just before Halloween in 1991, a rare combination of three weather systems combined off the New England coast to create some of the worst ocean conditions in history. Caught in the maw of this "perfect" (that is, bad as it could get) storm were Massachusetts-based fishing vessels near Newfoundland, a sailboat headed for Bermuda, and even Air National Guard rescuers off the New Jersey coast. Journalist Sebastian Junger captured this sprawling story in his best-selling 1997 book The Perfect Storm. The spate of weather-disaster movies in the 1990s, not to mention Junger's own photogenic chiseled looks, led to what the original WW Norton press release called "a heated auction for film rights." Warner Brothers won the auction, and after a very successful run in theaters ($182 million, fortieth all-time biggest non-inflation-adjusted cumulative gross), The Perfect Storm is now available at video rental stores everywhere.

Unfortunately, the film The Perfect Storm omits much of the appeal of the book while falling all too easily into the Hollywood disaster genre. Director and coproducer Wolfgang Petersen was an inspired choice, having directed Das Boot, arguably the most gripping water-related film in cinematic history. However, Petersen is more Air Force One than Das Boot these days, and the subtleties that made the book click are omitted or left in the computer's recycle bin. The result is a special-effects action-adventure film of only fair-to-middling quality.

The focus of the movie, and to a lesser extent the book, is the doomed Gloucester swordfish boat the Andrea Gail, captained by Billy Tyne (George Clooney). His crew, cleaned up for moviegoing consumption, has the usual heart-of-gold cook (John C. Reilly in the movie's only memorable human performance), the hunky youth (Mark Wahlberg, of course), the surly-guy-who-saves-your-neck, and so forth. Nervous significant others back in Gloucester (Diane Lane and others) choke down their fears when a fellow captain out in the storm (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) calls in a mayday for the Andrea Gail. But the boat is lost almost without a trace in the Atlantic in extremely high seas and winds and predictably high-blown James Horner music. In a subplot that considerably condenses actual events, the Bermuda-bound sailboat Mistral is rescued by an Air National Guard helicopter that itself subsequently goes down in the water trying to find the Andrea Gail, leading to a harrowing rescue of all but one parajumper.

This plot summary does not do justice to the real star of the movie, the special effects designed by George Lucas's famed Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The complex conditions of the open ocean in high winds are notoriously difficult to depict, but ILM's computer magicians have done it exceptionally well. ILM software developer John Anderson is said to have been the brains behind the realistic ocean waves, and with good reason: until a few years ago he was a tenured professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on computer codes of the atmosphere and ocean. The computer graphics, combined with credible action scenes filmed in the water tank, place the viewer in the center of the maelstrom. Here, Petersen's directorial approach works.

Sadly, the same attention to detail does not exist in the screenplay's design (to which author Junger did not contribute). Factual errors and confusions abound. For example, in the film the Andrea Gail attempts a risky turnaround in high seas, during which a wave causes the boat to do a 360-degree barrel roll upside down and rightside up, after which our heroes triumphantly (albeit temporarily) head for safety. However, most viewers will not understand what is being attempted and why it is risky; this key turning point, literally, is just not set up well. Furthermore, Junger himself states in the book that a boat like the Andrea Gail would never recover from such a dunking. The mayday-by-proxy for the boat, concocted for the purposes of the script, may also strike mariners as unlikely.

As a meteorologist, I have my own axes to grind. The filmmakers stumbled by using a TV weatherman pointing at a weather satellite picture to identify a cold front, a small low-pressure system, and a hurricane, all on the same picture. Of these three meteorological phenomena causing "the perfect storm," only the hurricane would be obvious to a layperson from the satellite picture. Viewers should rightly wonder what all the fuss is about; instead, a simple weather map would have done the trick. The strength of the hurricane is also greatly exaggerated in the movie, perhaps to justify the "perfect" nature of the storm. Finally, I wish the filmmakers had used at least one map to orient the viewer as to where and when the events were taking place. Brief captions at the bottom simply do not suffice.

In the end, Petersen and company may have learned that nothing is ever perfect. Junger's book was, in my opinion, mistitled; it was not a truly identifiable storm in the same way that the March 1993 "Storm of the Century" was. High winds and seas can be caused by strong atmospheric pressure gradients independent of any single storm. In late October 1991 the three weather systems helped set up these conditions for days at a time, causing havoc for hundreds of miles along the New England coast. This is simple maritime meteorology, but it is anathema for storytellers who need a strong plot, a small cast, and narrowly defined geography. Junger managed to overcome these difficulties with unifying discourses on rogue waves, the physiology of drowning, and the history of Gloucester fishing. Hollywood movies do not get that chatty, and so Petersen was left to focus on the action and the characters.

Even so, the script also throws the baby out with the seawater, omitting some wonderful human details from the book. For example, yet another boat caught in the storm was contacted by Canadian radio. What a surreal moment, to be interviewed as your boat is sinking! Admittedly, it did not happen on the Andrea Gail or the Mistral, but the screenwriters frequently included events on boats not in the movie as part of their artistic license. How could any screenplay, especially one that is not a stickler for accuracy, omit this priceless moment? Yet you will have to read the book to learn what happened. Similarly, the loss of Air National Guardsman "Jonesey" in the movie has none of the emotional punch of the real-life loss of Rick Smith, because the movie fails to flesh out "Jonesey" as Junger does Smith. Errors like this mount and drain the movie of the impact that the book had. By the time that the giant killer wave flips the Andrea Gail to its demise, you have been in the theater or on your couch for two hours, and you are probably no longer riveted to the screen.

The Perfect Storm is a predictable Hollywood specialeffects movie, or a less formulaic best-selling book. Take your pick of which to buy; take seasickness medicine, too, before watching the movie.

John Knox received his Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His forthcoming introductory meteorology textbook, Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere, coauthored with Steve Ackerman, includes a chapter on the sinking of the iron-ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in November 1975.

Copyright National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal Spring 2001
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