2.5/4  The Perfect Storm Quick Review
Typical Hollywood-ized version of a real event. Still, the special effects are pretty good and the acting, while far too heavy on the emotional side, is still decent. An okay, if not particularly memorable, adventure.

1.5/4  The Perfect Storm Quick Review
If this was not a true story, I would have given this movie half a star. The acting was pretty decent, but I could not get past how much the sloppy emotion the director tried to unsuccessfully put into this movie...Yawn...

4/4  The Perfect Storm Quick Review
A very original movie. The friendship, love and family that these fishermen share makes this movie what it is. The acting is also superb.

5/5 Great Effects
  by One Claw (Kernersville, NC)
The Perfect Storm is an excellent movie with breathtaking special effects, especially noticeable on blu-ray format.

4/5 Great Move *But* HD-DVD version NOT in HD
  by Gregory Streeter (Virginia, USA)
Most About the Perfect Storm has already be written here so I will limit my review to the HD-DVD mastering issue.

I own both the HD-DVD and regular Widescreen DVD version of this film.

I was surprised to discover the HD-DVD film transfer to video was NOT 1080p but rather a poor quality up-convert to 1080p from what was clearly a standard 480p master. You can see annoying blocking edges around all sharp lines as if the 480p video was bumped to 1080p with little or no interpolation.

Ironically the regular Widescreen DVD looks way better, as my player has built-in up-converting interpolation that cleans up most 480p to 1080p edge artifacts.

If you are looking to see this film in true HD, don't buy the HD-DVD.

I have yet to try the Blu-Ray to see if it's in true 1080p. Any feedback on the Blu-Ray this would be appreciated.

5/5 Review
  by Jesus E. Rodriguez
Thanks for the product. I recieved it right on time, and in good shape. Once again thank you, and i will recomend the seller to my friends.

3/5 Perfect Storm - Imperfect Blu-Ray disc..
  by E. Pierce (Kennebunk, ME USA)
I enjoyed this movie in the theater and bought this Blu-Ray disc to see it in high definition. Unfortunately, the Audio on the disc box indicates Dolby Digital TrueHD 5.1. Even the Blu-ray disc menu shows TrueHD as an option, but it doesn't work! I use an Onkyo TX-SR605 receiver to playback the Hi-Def audio like TrueHD and dts-HD. The sound is a big improvement from regular Dolby Digital. For some reason, this option doesn't work with this disk. (Wonder if anyone else experienced this problem???)
So, a four star movie gets only 3!

5/5 See the movie
  by Brennan Gordon (San Francisco, CA, USA)
I felt like this movie did a lot of typical things movies of this sort do: bad things are going to happen to these plucky guys, so let's give you some back story so you sympathize with them. Some of the back story in this movie was pretty cheesy. The movie picks up once the storm rolls in, but the weather guy at the TV station in Boston commenting on the meteorology to bring you along was pretty cheesy, too. Everyone has a pretty good idea how this ends up, but I'll try not to spoil it. There is a pretty good side story with a Coast Guard ship and an Air Force Reserve helicopter. The movie condenses down a couple of stories from the book, and takes some other liberties that have made other viewers skeptical about this plot. Yes, the Air Force helicopter really went out on a rescue in the storm, and it did in-flight refueling, although the helicopter's mission didn't have to do with the Andrea Gail. The rest of the helicopter's story is pretty much portrayed correctly. Usually when I've seen a fair to good movie based on the book, I'll find that the book is definitely worth reading, and that was the case here. As is also usually the case, I'm glad I saw the movie first.