Spoiler here (not that many readers won't have see the film). I don't have any complaints about the acting or FX, but I thought the structure stank. This perhaps stems from the underlying true story; life doesn't always provide good 'closure' to stories, but movies need it. As it stood, there was no coherent interaction between the three survival subplots (helicopter, yacht and fishing boat) and it was stupid and unsatisfying plotting to kill off all the fishermen. This is not because I wanted a happy ending, but because I think that if Mark Wahlberg had been made the viewpoint character and he alone had been rescued, The Perfect Storm would have been a great rite-of-passage story with a powerful bittersweet ending and strong resonances with Moby Dick. Instead, we got a syrupy and depressing anticlimax.
Review of The Perfect Storm
