Trailer
Plot summary
Billy Tyne captains the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing boat working out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. After a poor season, the boat's owner mocks his recent hauls, and Tyne talks his crew into one more trip in October, when the weather can turn. Five men sign on: Bobby, newly in love with Christina; Murph, a divorced father devoted to his son; Sully, whom Murph despises; Bugsy, who has just met Irene; and Alfred, from Jamaica. The fishing is poor, so Tyne steers east to the Flemish Cap. The catch finally comes, thousands of pounds of it, but the ice machine breaks, leaving the fish to spoil unless they return quickly. Between the Andrea Gail and Gloucester, a hurricane is merging with a northern front.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Perfect Storm (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- One of the crew members was so convinced that she was going to die that she wrote her name down and put it into a plastic bag duct-taped to her stomach, so her body could be identified.
SPOILER
Contrary to the movie's storyline, Captain Linda Greenlaw says she did not place a distress call on behalf of Andrea Gail; she had also been 600 miles east of the boat when it went down, not west as depicted, and said "They never indicated they were in trouble."- Zero-visibility conditions thwarted the crew's efforts and, lacking enough fuel to fly back to the Long Island base, they were forced to ditch the helicopter; four were picked up after a search by Tamaroa, and one was never seen again, while the Japanese yachtsman was later rescued by a Romanian cargo ship.
- Wolfgang Petersen asked Harrison Ford to play the lead role but Ford declined; his second choice, Nicolas Cage, also turned it down, and Mel Gibson wanted too much money, with Cage and Gibson going on to star in Gone in 60 Seconds and The Patriot instead.
- An Air National Guard helicopter was dispatched from Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base on Long Island, but not in response to the Andrea Gail or Satori, called Mistral in the movie; it departed mid-storm to help save a lone Japanese fisherman from a sinking sailboat 250 miles off the New Jersey coast.
SPOILER
Hurricane Grace is exaggerated in the movie, referred to by a weather forecaster as a "category 5" storm with winds over 137 knots, when in reality it had peaked at category 2 and ocean buoy monitors recorded gusts of 65 knots around the time Andrea Gail sank.- One winter night the Harmony began taking on water while tied to another boat, and when its crew yelled for help and no one woke, Sullivan dove into the icy water and pulled himself along the ropes tying the boats together, saving them.
- An older sister of crew member David "Sully" Sullivan said she was disappointed by the portrayal of "Sully" in the movie: "They made my brother's character out to be a hothead."
