The Perfect Storm (Petersen, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.25pm
This 35mm screening is part of director Mark Jenkin's 'Cinema and Sound' season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Time Out review:
Wolfgang Petersen's movie of Sebastian Junger's bestseller chronicles the last voyage of the Andrea Gail,
a swordfishing boat out of Gloucester, Massachussetts, lost at sea in
October 1991. In his foreword, Junger admits any attempt to recreate the
crew's experience can only be a matter of conjecture: 'I toyed with the
idea of fictionalising, but that risked diminishing the value of
whatever facts I was able to determine.' No such scruples for the
movie-makers, of course, but given that they're making it up, there's no
excuse for lines as corny as 'I wanna catch some fish - it's what I
do!' It doesn't much matter though. This is one of those films where
actions speak louder than words. Regular guy George Clooney may be too
intuitively smarmy to play your straight-ahead skipper, but the
authentically grizzled beard helps, and Petersen loads the boat with
plausible working-man types. And this is what's striking about the
movie. It's the first blockbuster in recent memory to hold faith with
everyday heroes just doing their jobs. More impressive still, their
heroism is a kind of unconscious blunder, a macho bluff compelled by
hard economic choices. The special effects are staggering and the last
hour builds from sinking dread to exhilarating defiance and, finally,
remorseful exhaustion.
Tom Charity
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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