The 2000 summer movie season is just about half over and, so far, the big action blockbusters that seemed the most promising when we were all still wearing hats and mittens have really let us down.  M:I-2?  Forget about it.  Gone in 60 Seconds?  Plot holes bigger than the Grand Canyon.  And you can chalk this one right up there with the others.  The Perfect Storm is the perfect bore and, although it’s only a two-hour film, it seems like a three-hour tour.  A three-hour tour.

That’s not to say that the film adaptation of Sebastian Junger’s best-seller about the fate of the Andrea Gail isn’t without merit.  The effects are, at times, pretty good, and the acting is, for the most part, solid and well-cast.  But I had problems with Storm right from the opening credits, which are displayed over a monument to those that have died at sea in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the film takes place.  If you didn’t know the ending before you walked into the theatre, the whole thing is ruined for you two minutes into the film.

Storm re-teams Three Kings co-stars George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg - the former playing sword-boat skipper Billy Tyne to the latter’s little buddy named Bobby Shatford (Clooney and Wahlberg are trying to be the Hepburn and Tracy of the new millennium).  The film opens in the fall of 1991, where Tyne and his crew have just returned from the latest in what we learn is a long string of unsuccessful fishing expeditions.  Because of their light load, each earns a lot less money than they had expected.  The cash is doled out by Andrea Gail owner Bobby Brown (Michael Ironside, The Omega Code), who is so unlikeable that they might as well have given him an eye-patch and a peg-leg.

Believing that there’s a lot of fish out there somewhere, Tyne reassembles his reluctant crew for one last run.  Tyne guarantees them a huge haul and tons of money, both of which he plans on accomplishing by venturing further into the ocean than these fishermen usually go.  So they kiss their wives/girlfriends goodbye, pack up the provisions, and head for the Flemish Cap, which sounds like something that might be worn in an Adam Sandler film, or perhaps a European contraceptive device.

What they encounter, of course, is the storm of the century, as Category 5 Hurricane Grace meets up with a bunch of Canadian cold fronts right on top of the Andrea Gail.  There are two-hundred-mile-an-hour winds and hundred-foot waves.  But if you’re thinking that the film is going to be an edge-of-your-seat adventure, you might want to show up late because it takes well over an hour before the water even starts to get a little bit choppy.

In addition to the monotonous waves that grow more and more tiresome, Storm’s shots are so tight on the action and so logged with water spray that you can barely tell up from down.  Director Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One) and Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale (The Talented Mr. Ripley) don’t offer much more than dark and wet.  Yes, I understand that the real Andrea Gail was probably very dark and very wet, but that doesn’t mean that the film had to recreate the look and feel to the point that it is here.  You might as well watch wearing a blindfold.

Although based on real people, I found the supporting roles to be little more than typical stock characters.  There’s the jaded and grizzled captain  (Clooney), the eager young kid (Wahlberg) with an attractive girlfriend, the bitter divorced guy (John C. Reilly, Magnolia), the rat-faced loser  (John Hawkes, Blue Streak), the down-and-out unemployed guy (William Fichtner, Drowning Mona) and the black guy that hardly has any screen time (Allen Payne, A Price Above Rubies).  For a while, I was sure he’d be the first one bumped off, but the “Brother Rule” doesn’t apply to Storm.  It’s also funny to think about the years and years that Wahlberg has probably spent with a dialect coach in an attempt to cover up his natural South Boston accent, only to drag it out of the closet here.

Also annoying is the performance of the usually dependable Diane Lane (My Dog Skip), who plays Shatford’s girlfriend.  She probably has underwear older than Walhberg, and she gets to toss in the time-honored “I have a bad feeling about this trip” line before the ship sets sail. Yeah, and you see dead people, too.  Storm also wastes a ton of time on the fate of three other people trapped in the storm on a separate, smaller craft and their attempted rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter. The tug-at-your-heart score comes compliments of James Horner (Titanic), who they must trot out for every water-themed action/drama film.

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