I hadn't seen this movie since I saw it in theaters (I only remember the date because I keep a journal of when I see movies in the theaters) and this movie was brought up when my family members were discussing this huge snowstorm that hit Minnesota, the Halloween Blizzard of '91 and I guess the storm from this movie was the cause of that.
I'm just going to go ahead and put up my SPOILERS AHOY (hey, that works because it's a movie about a boat at sea!)!! If you have not seen this 26 year old movie about a true event that took place 35 years ago and don't want to be spoiled, don't read any further because I will be spoiling a pretty major plot point soon after I'm done with this warning! Okay, you have been warned! Don't say I didn't warn you!!
It's the fall of 1991 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and a fishing boat called the Andrea Gail has just come back from a long fishing expedition with its crew of six - Capital Billy Tyne (George Clooney), Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg), Dale Murphy (John C. Reilly), Michael "Bugsy" Moran (John Hawkes), Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne), and Douglas Kosco. It seems like everyone in the whole town have come to greet them. While they're hugging their loved ones, a horrible realization washes over me and I think, They're all going to die. Now, I know that's probably a big understatement, but I didn't really remember the outcome of this movie. Which, yeah, I know is totally stupid of me because, hello, it's about these fishermen that are out in the middle of the ocean in this crazy storm. The odds don't look good!
Bobby's girlfriend, Christina (Diane Lane), is especially ecstatic that he's back. They both live above the bar his mom, Ethel, owns called The Crow's Nest which is right by the docks. There's a great scene of her getting primped in the bathroom (which just involves her putting on lip gloss because she's easily the most beautiful person in this town) and the camera follows her as she excitedly runs down stairs and outside onto the dock, waving and calling to Bobby and jumps in his arms.
Bob Brown (Michael Ironside) is the owner of the Andrea Gail and Hannah Boden (another boat captained by Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio)). When he looks at their inventory lists, he likes the numbers on Linda's, but not so much Billy's. The fishermen line up to get their pay. Bobby's only comes to $2,221 and he thinks it's a little short because he has already calculated he should be getting at least over $3,000. Bob breaks it down for him: They have 21,000 pounds of fish at 3.50 a pound which comes to 73,000 but they have to subtract 35,000 for bait, tackle, and fuel (that seems like a lot!) and that comes out to 38,500. Because Bob owns the boat, he gets half of that. Being the captain, Billy takes a double share, the other four crewmen get a full share each and because Bobby is a rookie (he is easily the youngest), he only gets a 3/4 share which comes to $2,221." I really felt for Bobby in that moment. You do all that grueling work and feel like you barely made anything.
Bob tells Billy that his pay was "a record low" for him and that even though he likes him, he likes his boat better and if he can't get a good haul of fish (which means a good pay), he'll find somebody who can. Billy replies the next time he goes out for fish, he'll catch so many that the Grand Banks (the area where he finds the fish) "won't be so grand anymore" and he will even go beyond if he needs to. This is what we call foreshadowing.
Douglas, one of the crew members, asks Billy if he'll be going out again this season. He has his eyes on a site in Florida which "beats the Grand Banks in October." This annoys Billy and he tells him goodbye, implying he's not welcome aboard his boat anymore. Douglas is dating the ex-wife of Dale Murphy (who goes by Murph), another crewmember, so that has to be awkward if they're on the same boat together. Murph has a young son who joins him in the bar.
However, their happiness is short-lived when Billy tells them they're going back out in a couple of days. Christina is not happy about this and runs off. The crew members start to argue with Billy, but he tells them he can easily find replacements with one phone call. Murph's son asks if he can go on the boat, which of course is a terrible idea. Even if there wasn't a horrible storm, I don't think that's a place for a kid!
Upstairs in their room, Christina tells Bobby to go back to what he did before, "Pack cod, repair tackle", but he tells her he's "sick of that" and the fishing provides more money. He needs the money because he's "got a divorce lawyer and a mountain of debt." So I've been listening to the audiobook (because of some work thing I won, I got three free credits from Audible, whoo hoo!) of the story that this movie is based on by Sebastian Junger. In the movie, it is mentioned that Bobby wants to meet Christina's kids (who we never see...I guess they're living with her ex? I was a little confused by that, but I guess the movie wasn't worried about focusing on that). While listening to the audiobook, I learned that Christina is divorced with three kids and Bobby is separated with two kids. It sounds like they just made Bobby divorced in the movie because it would be a little weird if he were paying for his girlfriend's divorce. But like I said, I don't think they were really worried about it since it's not the main focus of the movie.
When Murph is taking his kid back to his mom's, he tells him "one of these days your mom is gonna find you a new dad. The kid (you can tell I didn't learn his name) pouts and replies, "I don't want a new dad." Now while I didn't learn his name in the movie, in the book he is Dale Jr. He was three and a half when his dad perished, but in the movie he looks like he's six or seven.
Bugsy seems to notice that everyone seems to have a love interest except him (which isn't true...even though they try to make us think there's a romance about to happen between Billy and Linda, there's really not, maybe just some slight flirting and Murph isn't seeing anyone) so he strikes up a convo with a woman named Irene at a bar. He flops with two horrible pick up lines and it's totally cringe, but once he starts being real, she seems to like him. She has two kids and I presume is divorced. This storyline seems to come out of nowhere randomly, like they needed to give him some sort of human connection. Bobby had Christina, Murph had his young son, Alfred Pierre had his girlfriend he was pretty much glued to when he was on land, and Billy had two kids who lived in Florida with his ex.
Before Billy told his crew they would be heading back out in just a couple of days, he had been on the phone talking to a man named David Sullivan who goes by Sully (William Fichtner) who will be replacing Douglas on the boat. The morning they're supposed to leave, everyone is gathered at the bar. There is some tension between Sully and Murph because on the morning they're supposed to head out, Sully implies that he slept with Murph's ex-wife and Murph lunges at him. Ethel gets in between them to separate them, telling them, "How are you going to act on board if you're already at each other's throats?" I make a prediction that one will save the other during the storm.
A weather report was heard on the radio saying "Visibility will be good. System off the jet stream, won't be here for three or four days. Outlook for the next five days is clear." And maybe that's true, but they'll be out there longer than five days. It's usually about a month from what I learned from the book.
So the beginning of the movie told us this was fall 1991 and I did look up to see when these six fishermen departed for the last time on the Andrea Gail and it was September 20, 1991 (which technically still would've been summer, but only two days 'til fall, so close enough). Although I'm pretty sure the audiobook said they left on September 23 so who knows. I'll trust the author who researched it though.
Before they left, we saw a quick scene of dry goods being stocked on the boat and as the boat leaves, they're putting packaged meats in freezer and getting large stalls ready for the many fish they hope to catch, packing them with ice. They have an ice machine which will ultimately be the reason for their demise. The book goes into more detail about how much stuff they buy to prepare for their fishing expedition. They get $4,000 worth of groceries! And remember, this was 1991 so that would be nearly $10,000 today!
While he's unpacking in their small quarters, Bobby pulls out a letter Christina had put in there. We hear her voiceover telling him she had bigs news and at first I thought she was going to announce she was pregnant, but she tells him she bought a new place and that she "in it for the long run" which is sad considering what happens. But also, that's a pretty big step to take without consulting your partner!
Now I should preface this by saying since there were no survivors and the boat has never been found, obviously no one knows what happened (aside from the fact that this huge storm took them out), so obviously everything going on is pure speculation. Even before the storm hits, we'll see a lot of drama that I feel 110% never happened. But I get it; it's a movie and if you just have these guys sitting around and fishing, it would be boring. They still have a month out on the water before the storm will hit.
Here are some of the incidents that happen in the film that I feel very confident didn't actually happen on the actual Andrea Gail back in the fall of '91. Don't get me wrong: I'm not mad at the filmmaker for giving me a riveting film, but there's no way any of these actually happened:
-Murph goes overboard and almost drowns (this is before the storm hits). Tension between Murph and Sully escalates. I have no idea if there was really tension between these two men or if they just used it for the drama. (Probably the latter.)
One evening during dinner, Sully insults the lasagna Murph made for dinner. Murph says he once worked with a guy like him and he had "a bad accident" and that when you have an accident at sea ambulances are hard to come by. It's clearly a threat and not a great look for Murph. Cut to a few days later when they're baiting fish on the boat. It's a dark, rainy night which they seem to have a lot of. Sometimes it's hard to tell who is who because they're wearing raincoats with the hood pulled up. Sully drops a bunch of light sticks and everyone except Murph help him put them back in the bucket. (There were A LOT of light sticks that got dropped.) Oh, and Billy isn't helping him because he's steering the boat. Since he's the captain, that's pretty much his main job. Murph is still baiting the fish and something happens where he somehow gets tangled in the fishing wire because the hook accidentally gets imbedded in his hand (OUCHHHHHHH!!!) and he gets thrown into the water. The rain is so loud that nobody hears him go overboard; they're all busy with their task of picking up all the light sticks. Murph's boots fall off when he goes in the water and the water has to be FREEZING! Because he's caught on the wire, he can't come up for air. Guess who is the first to notice he's missing and the first to jump into the water? If you said Sully, his nemesis, you would be right. Bobby also jumps in behind him and someone calls for Billy. Because the wire is underwater, both Bobby and Sully have to swim underwater to follow the wire to reach Murph. He was pretty far out, so they swam for awhile without going up for air. If they had gone up air, they would have completely been disoriented and lost track of where the wire was. Remember, it's dark and rainy. (Even if it had been sunny, it still would have been hard to keep track of the wire if they came up for air.) When they reach Murph, he's unconscious. One of them cuts the wire and they all come up to the surface and the others pull them back to the boat. Billy gives Murph CPR and he comes to only to have to have Billy take out the hook lodged in his hand. Before he does it, Murph tells him to hold on a sec and puts a wooden spoon in his mouth, but you can still tell it's painful. If I were Murph, I would've been like, Couldn't you take out the hook in my hand BEFORE you performed CPR? You know, priorities!
Murph asks Billy who saved him and when he tells him it was Bobby and Sully, he seems annoyed when he hears the second name, as though he's thinking, Oh, damn, now I gotta go thank that guy. The next day he thanks Bobby first and he lets him know that Sully was the first to go in. Murph sighs (he really doesn't want to thank Sully!) and tells Sully he's glad he knows how to swim and admits that's all he can manage right now. So things aren't settled between the two of them, but they're better. At least now Sully won't be the victim of a "bad accident" (at least not one intentionally set by Murph). At least they're not getting into stupid fights and arguments anymore. Before this whole incident happened, there was one time where they got into a fight and because they needed to be working, Bugsy tells them to shake, but they just sort of slap hands at each other which was hilarious.
One evening Bugsy tells Billy the boys would like to have a word with him and takes over the wheel. Bobby tells their captain they're "starting to get an unlucky feeling out here" and mentions what happened to Murph and the shark and the rogue wave that their boat met the other day. They're not catching much fish (they've only filled one stall with fish and it's not even full) and they just want to go home. Billy is not happy with them and says they need to get fish. He tells them he's headed East to the Flemish Cap. They were headed to the Grand Banks which is off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland (quite a bit off the coast of those provinces according to the map I found) and I think that's where they've been fishing, but Billy has decided to head east to the Flemish Caps which is "an area of shallow waters in the North Atlantic Ocean...about 563 km / 350 miles east of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador." (Guess who went to Wikipedia? Again.)
Linda, who is the captain of the Hannah Boden, radios Billy to tell him she's at the tale end of the banks and "it's kicking up something wicked here." When asked for his position, she realizes that he's headed for the Flemish Cap which is "nearly off the charts" (in the literal sense). She tells him he's crazy because of all these storms "that could be a triple header." He replies that it's behind him, but she reminds him he's got to go through it to get back.
When they reach the Flemish Cap, they catch enough fish to fill all three of the stalls. They all know they're going to get nice paychecks. Everything is looking pretty good...until the ice machine breaks. So this is something that they know actually happened. Who knows if it played out as exactly it does in the movie, but it's quite possibly it's the reason they all died as portrayed here. For now, they've got ice on the fish. They now have a big dilemma.
So throughout the movie, while the Andrea Gail is the main storyline, we do jump to other scenes of different characters and different settings. One of them is the meteorologist at the Channel 9 newsroom in Boston. He looks at a weather map of the Eastern U.S. on the computer and sees a huge storm cloud off of Bermuda and mutters, "This doesn't look good." All this crazy weather is accumulating to create "the perfect storm."
At one point, we see cargo ships that are getting pummeled by the ginormous waves; their cargo easily getting knocked off of the huge vessels. If these huge ships are getting battered, you know it's not gonna be good for that fishing boat
There's a 32-foot sailboat called the Mistral with three passengers played by Bob Gunton, Karen Allen, and Cherry Jones. Now I see those actors in the credits and was wondering when they were going to show up and here they are. We are told they have left from Portsmouth, New Hampshire and are heading to Bermuda. I was kind of wondering why they were even in this movie. Yes, they do get caught up in the titular Perfect Storm, but this movie is mainly about the Andrea Gail. They are sort of connected to the fishing vessel, but only by a very thin thread. The guys from the Coast Guard who rescue them are the same guys who get the call about the Andrea Gail. Now in the book there is absolutely no connection between them except for the fact that they are involved in the storm. The dynamic of these three people were never really discussed as these three characters (who do live) are really not important in the grand scheme of things. While listening to the audiobook, the man is the owner of the boat and needed a small crew to help him sail. He knew somebody who knew the two women (who worked together) or something like that. I feel like this whole storyline is added to help pad the movie. There's this ridiculous scene where Karen Allen is holding a piece of paper which is the weather fax to show the others. I had to laugh because it's windy, heavily raining, and waves are crashing around them as she's holding this piece of paper. Maybe she should've shown them this inside the cabin. She tells Bob Gunton, the one who has the most experience, that they need to head in now. He says it will be too dangerous to head into a harbor because they'll be currents across shipping lanes and that it's his boat and they're gonna "ride this thing out." It seems like he just wants to go with the flow which seems insane.
A few scenes later we'll return to the Mistral and the storm is creating these huge waves and they're just being knocked around. The sailing vessel does a 360 turn in the water and when I say that I mean it literally goes underwater and rolls back up, I'm not talking it turned all the way around on top of the water. Cherry Jones tells Bob Gunton that she's going to "point this boat up into the storm and scream for help." He wants to ride it out says it's his boat, but she replies, "This is my life." She uses the radio to call for a mayday and their position. They just hear radio static in return.
Eventually, they do get through to the Air National Guard and tell them their coordinates. It's so dark and rainy and the ocean is black, I don't even know how the rescuers can see anything. There's a very exciting rescue scene where they hook a wire (which gets caught in one of the cables on the boat at one point) with a basket and one of the rescuers have to go down and it looks like he gets swept away for a moment. Oh, and he's wearing this black wetsuit and mask so it's nearly impossible to see him in the rainy night sky and dark water. Seriously, how are they even able to see him? The three people are rescued and taken to a Coast Guard ship. They are dropped off there because they get a message about the Andre Gail and go to rescue them. So that is why the people on the Minstral and their rescue are included in this movie. It's all very loosely connected. It was Linda who called in the mayday.
The helicopter needs more fuel and they meet up with a plane that will give them their fuel. Because of the wind and rain, it's just impossible to fill the tank and so they have to abort. Because the helicopter will run out of fuel soon, the men have to jump out before it crashes into the ocean. The last man to jump issues a mayday so the Coast Guard can find them.
There are four men and three of them are able to find each other pretty quickly, but they can't find the fourth one. The Coast Guard ship finds them and there are these nylon mesh ladders they have to climb up and I know there's no way I would have the strength to climb that after being pummeled by the storm while trying to keep afloat (and alive) in the vast ocean. One of the men is so tired he can't hold on and falls off. One of his comrades jumps off the net and goes after him. They try again and he tells him to "grab it with everything [he's] got" and they are pulled up. The fourth man is still missing and is never found.
The residents of Gloucester, especially those with loved ones aboard the Andrea Gail have gathered at the Crow's Nest to watch a news report. Both Christina and Bobby's mother are relieved when they hear there will be a rescue operation for the men. It is Bob Brown, owner of the Andrea Gail who comes in the bar to break the bad news about the rescue operation being called off. Christina is so distraught she screams at him, basically saying it's his fault because those men are out there risking their lives for "some fish" and Bobby's mother has to comfort her.
As you can imagine, in the final moments of the Andrea Gail there's quite a lot of action. I'm not going to lie, watching this movie was extremely stressful. While Billy is in the enclosed room on top of the boat steering the vessel, outside the window the only thing you can see is water. The water they're on and the water pouring down from the sky. Everything just looks the same. I don't know how he knows where he's going. It especially doesn't help that the antennae has been washed away. Billy exclaims, "No antennae, no radio, we're back in the 19th century!"
Bugsy (I think it was him, it was really hard to tell who was who) falls overboard and Billy throws a lifesaver to him. They've tried to board up the broken windows, but there's not really much they can do.
When they've done all they can do, they go inside the cabin to get a little reprieve. Billy tells them, "Boys, that's it. We can't make it." He decides to turn around. I guess the goal is to sail out of the storm, but how far have they already gone? I don't think turning around isn't going to make a difference (spoiler alert: it won't), but I guess it's their best chance.
Billy and Bobby go to the wheel and Billy manages to do it. I honestly don't know how Billy didn't become disoriented when he turned the boat around...literally everything looks the same. I would be confused and unsure if I wasn't just at the same spot I started from! Everyone is happy that the boat has turned around. Bobby tells Billy that he's giving him his notice, that this will be his last trip: "If we get back, I'm going right to Salisbury Beach with Chris." It's interesting that he said "if", and now "when".
There is a glimmer of hope when they see a glimpse of sunlight peeking through the clouds. The four other men, who are in the cabin, can see it through the porthole. Bobby said, "We're gonna make it." But the sky quickly goes dark again and Billy says, "She's not gonna let us out."
The most insane 100 foot wave is about to crash down on them. Billy is steering the boat so it is parallel with the wave. The wave easily knocks it back and it lands in the water so it's completely upside down. The top is on the bottom and the bottom is on the top. This looks absolutely terrifying. The boat is quickly filling with water and they are able to find small pockets of air.
Bar none, the saddest scene in the movie is when Murph says, 'This is gonna be hard on my little boy." Ugh, that just broke me heart. They all know they're going to die. He, Bugsy, Sully, and Alfred Pierre are trapped in the cabin. Alfred Pierre is trying to break the porthole, but to no avail.
Billy, who is with Bobby, tells the young man he's sorry he got him into this. Bobby replies that they made the right call, that they had to try. I would beg to differ about making the right call! Billy tells him they should get out of there. From where they are, they are able to swim out of the boat and to the surface. They both swim out and Bobby continues to swim, but Billy stays with the boat, watching Bobby swim towards the surface. Once he sees Billy has surfaced, he goes back in the boat. I guess he figures since he's the captain he has to go down with the boat. Does he think Bobby will be rescued? I mean, maybe, but it seems pretty unlikely because they are out in the middle of nowhere.
The boat has completely been swallowed up by the ocean. I guess it's never been found.
While Bobby is in the water, we get this completely unnecessary and hokey inner dialogue scene of him talking to Christina and telling her how much he loves her and that he'll always love her. We see Bobby in the water and above him is a fading image of Christina the last tine he saw her when she was waving him off. I don't think we needed this scene because this is pretty much the same thing he told her before saying goodbye to her. Maybe we could have had a flashback of that scene as though that was his last thought before he perishes. The way it's portrayed is just so trite. This scene actually does come back. After the funeral, which Linda gives the eulogy for, Christina tells Bobby's mom about a recurring dream she has about him and he's saying the same thing he thought before he died. At the funeral, since there were no bodies found, instead they have pictures of the six men in front of the alter.
The movie ends with a memorial at the City Hall where the names of all the fishermen who have lost their lives to the sea have been inscribed on the wall. We see the names of the six men aboard the Andrea Gail who perished at sea in October of 1991. Text appears on the screen saying the movie is dedicated dated to the 10,000 Gloucestermen who have died at since 1623.
I do wonder if this story or movie gave people thalassophobia which is the "intense, persistent, and irrational fear of deep, open, or dark bodies of water like the ocean or large lakes.
Oh, one last thing, I watched this movie on Amazon and the blurb describes it as a "BAFTA-winning seasick terror with George Clooney." Seasick terror? I've never heard of such a description for a film. Also, pretty sure nobody ever got seasick. It was just very odd. Who is writing these?
