For some reason I can never remember the title of this movie and ended up calling it The Perfect Storm all the time. Meaning, it's not a good title for the movie itself.
Right off the bat, I am loving the love story theme song with a very romantic hook. And the setup for Chris Pine and Holliday Grainger's love story was also a very good start to the movie, albeit a little long - which got me a little nervous as I didn't want another Pearl Harbor.
Both Pine and Casey Affleck were the leads of the movie, both carrying their sections of the story. I love how Craig Gillespie directed the parts when he's showing us the two characters, who have mastered their art, were in control of their fate. Pine and Affleck were as if their boats were an extension of their physical forms, and led their teams out of the danger zone.
Ben Foster was also very good here, stealing scenes as he always is. He put on a little weight for this and I didn't even recognise him, since all I see these days is him as Lance Armstrong in The Program.
From start to finish, you can tell it's a very Disney-fied movie and there was almost never a real sense of the risk of loss involved. Some of the distractions offered by side stories like with Grainger were also very Disney-like.
And that could be my biggest dislike for the movie. Watching this I couldn't help but feel that Disney pushed for a "Disney Princess" in Grainger: A strong-willed female character, beautiful and confident at the same time, that went against the time to stand up for what she believes in. That, I felt, was jammed down our throats and also made the movie suffered. Her side story should have ended when she walked out of the station but then it went into a whole other thing.
That whole scene with Pine and Grainger's characters at the ball, and how that scene ended, was very poorly written and I thought Gillespie did the best he could; but it was just badly written and very out of character for Grainger. Why would she accept under that circumstance?
Another part, although a tiny part, didn't play out well too was about Affleck's belief in luck. Did he change his mind at the end? I thought the message about "I don't believe in luck" would have served as a better message here had it gone the other way.
Lastly, another small negative I have was when everyone decided to go to the pier when the power went out - I thought it was to use their headlights and that's why everyone drove down there. But no, that whole plot again was just baffling.
Overall, it's still a movie that's done very well by Disney, but the writing could have been so much better, or could have spent less time on unnecessary plot designs.
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