BEFORE: Wrapping up movies about boats or the sea - I've been meaning to watch this one for quite a while. Unfortunately, I know how it ends - but it's a link to some other disaster films that haven't been spoiled for me yet.
THE PLOT: In the Fall of 1991, the "Andrea Gail" left Gloucester, Mass. and headed for the fishing grounds of the North Atlantic. Two weeks later, an event took place that had never occurred in recorded history.
AFTER: Well, George Clooney's now been well represented in my movie choices, since I watched all 3 "Ocean's" movies, and "Burn After Reading", "Leatherheads", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", and "Three Kings".
I'd say this is a good movie to watch when you've had a tough day at work - not that I know anything about that - you can come home and take comfort in the fact that you're job is not as difficult as being a Gloucester fisherman (unless, of course, you work on a fishing boat in the Gloucester area...)
The story is about the convergence of three storms (stahms...) and also the convergent stories of a fishing boat, a small sailboat, and a rescue helicopter in the middle of it all. The fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, is full of manly men doing manly things while interacting with each other in manly man-ways.
What women don't usually understand about men is how they can hate each other - but still work together, after punching it out or saving each other's lives or something. Women hold grudges - men just slug it out or hug it out.
A word about accents - (and I know I'll be talking with a Boston accent tomorrow) - the movie gets them mostly right, with people saying "GLAW-ster", "SAHD-fish" and "PAH-kin lawt" - Mark Wahlberg of course is a natural, and Diane Lane does admirably, but Clooney seems to be above it all.
And there's a little too much exposition at the beginning ("I'm a fisherman, fishing's what I do. I catch fish.") and not enough at the end, when I would have loved to know a little bit about the science of steering around (through?) 30-foot swells.
But all in all it's an extremely exciting tale, though more than a bit stressful, and it'll make you appreciate the men who go out and put their lives on the line so that other people can have food on their table...
Also starring John C. Reilly, William Fichtner, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Karen Allen, and Christopher McDonald as the local TV weatherman.
RATING: 7 out of 10 fishhooks
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