The Perfect Storm (SPOILERS)
"Twister" - but only marginally better acted.
The first 30 or so minutes is devoted to character development, so we can have an investment in our crew of six fishermen who will weather the storm. There is the romantic swordboat captain on a bad streak (George Clooney); the young turk in love (Mark Wahlberg); the divorced father of one fighting to maintain a relationship with his son vis-a-vis "the sea" (John C. Reilly); the poor white trash outcast (William Fichtner); the old salt who just met love in the form of a lonely, overweight woman at the bar (some grizzled person); and the superstitious minority guy (some Creole person). And Fichtner and Reilly don't get along for reasons that make little sense, except that one must thereafter save the life of the other, which is exactly what happens.
We also meet the women who love the men who bring us fish filets: a hard-bitten divorcee (Diane Lane) who curses the day a sail was set; a hard-bitten tavern owner and mother of two of our ill-fated crew; the competing hard-bitten captain who wants to transfer Clooney's heart from the sea to her stern (Mary Elizabeth Mastraontonio); and the hard-bitten overweight woman with two kids who waits for the grizzled guy, the ex-wife of Reilly, and some floozie who shacks up with the superstitious Creole guy.
To a person, the character development is hackneyed and paper-thin. Hollywood goes to Gloucestor and gets an accent - and that's all. If you juxtapose the developments of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw in "Jaws" prior to their going out in the water, "The Perfect Storm" becomes even more painful. If you've seen that, than find "Captain's Courageous."
