As with most best-sellers, Hollywood came calling. The Perfect Storm is perfect material for a summer movie. It has drama, action, and humanity. It is fiercely thrilling, but also ultimately about something - an action movie with substance. The town is Gloucester, Mass. where commercial fishing is not just big business, but a way of life. George Clooney plays Billy, the grizzled captain of one fishing ship who has not had much luck bringing in the product recently. He gets the chance to make another run on a boat called the Andrea Gail; his career will probably depend on how many fish he brings back with him.

Billy recruits his usual team for the expedition, most notably Bobby (Mark Wahlberg). It's late in the season and Bobby's girlfriend Christina (Diane Lane) doesn't want him to go. He verbalizes his conundrum perfectly: "I've got a girl I can't stand to be more than two feet away from. On the other hand, I love to fish." Fishing wins out, but only because the couple is desperately in need of money.

Once on the seas, Billy leads the Andrea Gail into even further waters. Fish are found, but in order to get them back in time, the ship will have to sail through a bad storm. What he doesn't know is that the boat isn't facing one bad storm, it's facing three that have combined to create a "perfect storm."

And what a storm it is. The waves are like mountains, several times the size of the boat. The wind blows the anchor around like it's made of paper. Water seeps in, soaking the crewmen every second. Visibility is low, danger high. For a while, Billy and crew navigate it, but eventually it seems like the storm is not going to let them win. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard attempts a rescue mission for a small sailboat out on the water.

The Andrea Gail battles waves in The Perfect Storm

The special effects in The Perfect Storm are spectacular. Director Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One) has assembled a top-notch team of effects men to make the storm as realistic as possible. The use of CGI and miniatures combine to create something so authentic that you have to wonder how anyone faced the real thing without dropping dead of fright. Although I knew how bad the storm was from listening to the audio book, seeing it recreated had a bigger impact on me. I was stunned to think that people really faced something like this. Because we know it's real, there is a genuine sense of excitement to the film, despite the fact that we know how the story is going to turn out. (The movie deserves comparison to Apollo 13 in that regard.)

The extended storm scenes are certainly thrilling, but what really gives the movie its punch is the human quality it has. The actors - especially Clooney and Wahlberg - effectively create 3-dimensional characters. We understand their passion for fishing, but also their desire to have a more stable lifestyle. The job takes them away for weeks or months at a time, making a normal home life impossible. Because we care about these people, the eventual tragedy has much more impact than it would otherwise. (Here, a comparison to Titanic would be appropriate.)

I liked how the movie showed the men's lives outside of the fishing world. Bobby dreams of making enough money to start a new life with Christina. Billy has a flirtation with another ship captain (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio); he likes her enough to consider giving up his solitary ways. Another crew member (John C. Reilly) has had his family life destroyed by his job. He sees his ex-wife and young son whenever possible, which isn't enough. All the men have become their work, but they are not defined by it. They are lovers, friends, sons, husbands, and fathers just as much as they are fishermen.

The movie additionally provides an understanding of how dangerous commercial fishing is. Men and women put their lives on the line for it. If The Perfect Storm has a message, it is that passion sometimes drives people to take risks, and risks sometimes produce tragedies. Even so, there is some comfort in knowing that the victims die doing something they love.

( 1/2 out of four)

The Perfect Storm is rated PG-13 for language and scenes of peril. The running time is 2 hours and 9 minutes.