LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Patriotism extended only so far at the North American box office on a July 4 holiday weekend.

Faced with the choice of seeing Mel Gibson defeat the English in the Revolutionary War saga ``The Patriot'' or watching George Clooney battle huge waves in the maritime disaster picture ``The Perfect Storm'' moviegoers overwhelmingly opted for the latter.

``The Perfect Storm,'' based on Sebastian Junger's best-selling book about a fishing boat caught up in a freak weather pattern, opened at No. 1 with $64 million for the five days ended July 4, according to studio estimates issued Tuesday.

``The Patriot'' grabbed the No. 2 slot with $35.2 million for the comparable Friday-to-Tuesday period, while the clay-animated comedy ``Chicken Run'' slipped one place to No. 3 with $21.0 million. The previous weekend's champ, Jim Carrey's ''Me, Myself & Irene'' fell to No. 4 with $19.5 million.

Since Independence Day holiday fell on a Tuesday, many businesses also took Monday off, boosting attendances at movie theaters.

Overall ticket sales for the seven days ended July 6 will reach $235 million, a record for a July 4 week, said Dan Fellman, president of distribution at Warner Bros., which released ``The Perfect Storm.'' The existing record of $222.5 million was set last year, when Will Smith's ``Wild Wild West'' ruled the roost.

``The Perfect Storm'' accounted for about a third of the $193 million racked up by the top 13 films, Fellman said.

``It's phenomenal for us,'' he added. The Time Warner Inc.- owned (NYSE:TWX - news) studio released the PG-13 film in 3,407 theaters across the United States and Canada. Exit polls were ``just fantastic.''

The six men in a leaky boat tale was directed by German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, who was last in theaters with 1997's ``Air Force One.''

Not that the team behind ``The Patriot'' was not thrilled with its film, which had to contend with an R rating and a 160-minute running time. Sony Corp.-owned (6758.T) Columbia Pictures reported that 93 percent of moviegoers polled would recommend it, and 53 percent of those would pay to see it again.

Producer Dean Devlin noted that as the weekend progressed, the gender balance tipped from male to female, indicating spreading word of mouth that the film was more than just a gory epic but also a love story.

``I feel like I've weathered the storm,'' said Devlin who, with the film's director Roland Emmerich, was also responsible for ``Independence Day'' and the Hollywood remake of ''Godzilla.''

Since opening last Wednesday, ``The Patriot'' has grossed about $44.5 million from 3,061 theaters, putting it on a similar trajectory as last year's ``The Matrix'' and 1995's ``Apollo 13,'' which each ended up north of $170 million, he said.

The film begins its international run Friday in Australia, home territory for the film's stars, Gibson and budding heartthrob Heath Ledger.

The prognosis was not so good for the holiday weekend's third wide new release, ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'' (Universal). Based on late animator Jay Ward's old TV cartoon series about a flying squirrel and a moose, the picture opened at No. 5 with $11.0 million for the five days. Despite the star power of Robert De Niro, who also produced, the film was beset by bad reviews and low recognition of the source material, observers said.

Carrey's ``Irene'' is also shaping up as a disappointment, with a $55.4 million haul after 12 days in release. The comedy should end its domestic run in the $80 million range, said Tom Sherak, chairman of Twentieth Century Fox's domestic film group.

``Any time you have a comedy with Jim Carrey and (writer/ directors) the Farrelly brothers, you'd love to see it do more,'' Sherak said. But he noted that R-rated comedies traditionally have a tougher time at the box office.

Fox, a unit of News Corp.-controlled (NCP.AX) Fox Entertainment Group Inc. (NYSE:FOX - news), has endured such recent domestic disappointments as ``Titan A.E.,'' ``The Beach'' and ''Anna and the King.''

On the other hand, DreamWorks' ``Chicken Run'' is exceeding expectations, with $49.4 million after its second weekend. From the British animators behind the Oscar-winning ``Wallace and Gromit'' short film series, the film revolves around the efforts of farm chickens to fly the coop and avoid being turned into pies. Gibson voices one of the characters.

DreamWorks distribution president Jim Tharp said the film was on track to end up in the $90 million-$110 million range.

New releases next weekend include ``Disney's The Kid,'' a comedy starring Bruce Willis; and ``Scary Movie,'' a raunchy horror spoof generating much buzz for getting its gratuitous nude scenes past the ratings board.

MARK Wahlberg emerged from filming "The Perfect Storm" bruised, battered and waterlogged - and with a gash in his leg from the jaws of an animatronic shark.
But he felt it had all been worth the effort when he attended the film's premiere in Danvers, just outside Gloucester, the home turf of the crew of the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing boat that fell prey to the titular tempest in 1991.

He was proud that his character Bobby Shatford's real-life family, with whom he spent time preparing for his role, considered the film a fitting tribute.

"I felt like I had really accomplished something by doing them justice," says Wahlberg, who still lives in his native Boston with his mother.

"I felt a huge responsibility while filming to reach out to the family and let them know what I intended doing and what the movie would be like.

"It was a sensitive subject. They were really happy that I was involved, as a guy who's from their neck of the woods, who understands what it was like to grow up there in a difficult situation."

The 29-year-old actor's rugged yet vulnerable screen presence provides the emotional center of "The Perfect Storm."

He delivers a strong - some critics are saying Oscar-worthy - performance as Shatford, a young fisherman who signs on with Captain Billy Tyne (George Clooney) for one last trip to raise the money to pay off his divorce lawyer and start a new life with his girlfriend.

"We wanted to show audiences around the world the dangers fishermen have to face," he says. "It became my mission to really serve them well, make the people who knew them proud."

It was a difficult mission.

"I made the mistake of telling [director] Wolfgang Petersen I was capable of anything and that I would do all the stuff that all these other Hollywood kids wouldn't," Wahlberg says.

"Of course, he tried to prepare us for the storm that he had created in this tank, but no words could really prepare us.

"Everybody got banged up really badly. In order to make it real, we had to get out there and, you know, really brave the elements."

The film's storm sequences were recreated on a Hollywood sound stage and, while being constantly doused by thousands of gallons of water, many of the cast and crew got seasick.

Wahlberg's strong constitution finally gave out on the second to last day of the six-month shoot.

"George [Clooney] has been laughing and telling everybody who will listen that I got sick on the boat," he says. "But I had food poisoning the night before and I had to get on the boat and do a really big scene with a lot of dialogue with George - it wasn't easy."

During the course of a checkered career, Wahlberg has risen from Boston street thug to controversial rapper, to underwear model, finally landing among the ranks of Hollywood's most critically praised actors.

"I thought if I did the real work, I could become a respected actor - that's all I wanted to accomplish," says Wahlberg, who followed up a breakthrough performance opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 1995's "The Basketball Diaries" with "Boogie Nights" and "Three Kings," which also starred Clooney.

Wahlberg will pair up with Clooney for a third time in Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" and has just wrapped the Clooney-produced "Metal God," in which he plays a Pittsburgh youth posing as an English rock star, a role he considers his most challenging to date.

"I had to do a really bad English accent, lose weight and quit smoking so I could sing," he says. "Musically, I had to challenge myself by getting into this metal music, which is something I never listen to." For this part, he says, "I did nothing but listen to metal."

Wahlberg, who recently signed to star in a "Planet of the Apes" film, acknowledges he's come a long way from his days of street hustling, doing drugs and running wild on the streets of Boston.

"I continue to work on being a better person, that's my full-time job," he says. "I'm being put in situations and it would be a shame not to use them to really help other people.

"I'd like to see kids not have to go the hard route I went," he says.

It howls like a werewolf. It kills with the brutal indifference of Dracula. Like a rabid dog, it rages and spits. Like Diane Sawyer, it never sleeps.

We speak of the storm--the title character in The Perfect Storm, the adaptation of Sebastian Junger's 1997 nonfiction best seller that opens this week. We do not speak, however, of the $140 million film. For more on that, you, along with the Warner Bros. executives, can read the critics or check out the box-office grosses after opening weekend. (You'll know them; they'll be the ones with the gnawed-down fingernails and little voodoo dolls bearing a striking resemblance to the July 4 competition: Rocky, Bullwinkle and Mel Gibson.)

No, here we speak of the storm, because it may be the most ambitious cinematic undertaking since Sylvester Stallone tried comedy. For most of the movie, it conspires to destroy the Andrea Gail, a 72-ft. swordfishing vessel that sailed from Gloucester, Mass., on Sept. 20, 1991, into a meteorological hell. After looming ominously in the distance for a while, the storm moves in for the kill, drowning a rescue worker, swallowing a helicopter, attacking a freighter and upstaging George Clooney, who stars as the Andrea Gail's captain, Billy Tyne. Let it be said right up front that Clooney is a terrific actor, a funny guy and a sexy movie star (he and co-star Mark Wahlberg never looked better, by the way, than they do here), but even director Wolfgang Petersen--who was drawn to the project because of his interest in the characters--concedes that the storm is the movie's major player. "It is massive; it is gigantic; it is something made from nightmares," says Petersen. "It is the bad guy of all bad guys."

But is it perfect? We'll answer that question in the last paragraph. For now, let's say that it is something of a milestone in filmmaking. Although computer-generated images, or CGI, have been around for a couple of decades, Petersen's film is traveling the highest plane of the state of the art. Using weather reports, scientific formulas and frequent flights of fancy, a team of artists at Industrial Light & Magic, the prolific special-effects house behind Terminator 2 and the Star Wars franchise, has rendered the roiling seas and crashing waves almost entirely on computers (no miniature boats were used, and the film's actors and crew spent only three weeks shooting on real ocean water). The Perfect Storm also leads the charge in this summer's digital bonanza, which includes Dinosaur's realistic talking reptiles, Titan A.E.'s beautiful 3-D space-scapes, and the casts of computer-generated thousands in Gladiator and The Patriot. And that's not all. See Kevin Bacon disappear in The Hollow Man! See Eddie Murphy dance with himself in the sequel to The Nutty Professor! See Rocky and Bullwinkle act with Robert De Niro! See Rebecca Romijn-Stamos turn blue in X-Men!

"You couldn't have had Dinosaur without [digital] technology," says Andrew Millstein of Disney's ambitious new special-effects division, the Secret Lab, which is computer-generating puppies for its upcoming 101 Dalmatians sequel. "As technology evolves, it's going to unfetter our imaginations." The Perfect Storm, in fact, is a perfect example of a story told in a new way thanks to digital know-how. Says visual-effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier: "Here we are really creating the whole environment of the movie."

Fangmeier, like Petersen, hails from Germany and both speak with hefty accents, but the director didn't hire the f/x (Hollywood parlance for special effects) wizard out of Teutonic solidarity. Petersen tapped Fangmeier because of his impressive, all-digital work on Twister. Still, there were no guarantees; while water has been digitally drawn before (notably in Titanic and Waterworld), The Perfect Storm would require a level of simulation that had never been attempted. On Warner Bros. soundstage No. 16, a shipping vessel doubling for the Andrea Gail was harbored in a large tank 22-ft. deep (the same tank where Spencer Tracy sailed in The Old Man and the Sea 42 years ago). In front of a blue screen, mounted on a gimbal, the Andrea Gail tossed and turned while the actors (in addition to Clooney and Wahlberg, the boat's crew includes John C. Reilly, Allen Payne, John Hawkes and William Fichtner) employed their craft amid wind machines and torrents of pelting water. Meanwhile, just up the California coast at ILM headquarters in San Rafael, near San Francisco, animators awaited footage so it could be digitally plugged into the computer-generated storm.

Since the gimbal could turn the boat only so much, the ILM crew had to jostle it further after scanning footage into the computer. And since no miniatures were used, "for a very wide shot," says ILM's associate effects supervisor Doug Smythe, "the boat would be computer-generated as well." At times, so were the actors. During a sequence in which Clooney climbs an outrigger to cut loose a flailing stabilizer, a CG double was created for certain camera angles. (Basically, when you're not seeing Clooney's face, you're seeing a digital dummy.)

No feat, of course, rivaled ILM's waterworks. During the film's research and development stage, another associate effects supervisor, Habib Zargarpour, studied how waves break and froth by leaning out of a helicopter and sailing on choppy seas with a video camera. "First we found out it's all about foam," says Zargarpour. "Then we found out it's all about mist." Reality was then simulated by ILM's software creators, fluid-dynamics expert John Anderson and programmer Masi Oka. Given variables like wind velocity, for example, the program could determine the size of a wave or the magnitude of a splash. ILM artists would often test hundreds of variables for a single shot, and Zargarpour's team would provide "shaders" to simulate texture and reflection of light.

"On top of that," says Fangmeier, "you have the texture of the water and the white stuff, then you have a boat going through it, then you have a wave that breaks and has its own foam." Since the systems governing the individual elements could not be run simultaneously, mist, foam, splash, wake and currents had to be integrated for each shot. To do so, f/x artists manipulated the foam with more tiny white particles, each one with its own marching orders. By the end, The Perfect Storm's 336 detail-intensive f/x shots consumed more computer memory than the nearly 2,000 shots in The Phantom Menace. "Everybody has gone to the beach and looked at the waves and seen them crashing," says Fangmeier. "You get a sense of what that looks like. We had to get to the point where nothing pops out and you say, 'Wait a minute.'"

That was Petersen's job, as in, wait a minute, that wave should be bigger. "You learn all the sciences," says Fangmeier, "but we did break some of the scientific rules when it came to those Hollywood moments." If you've seen the trailer, you've already seen the film's most impressive Hollywood moment--the Andrea Gail's scaling a mountainous wave that threatens to fold her into its crest. "I said, 'Wolfgang, that's a 200-plus-ft. wave. That's impossible, certainly not recorded in this storm,'" Fangmeier recalls. "So we did scale it down a little bit. A little bit."

And so, little bit by little bit, it was done.

Now we come to the last paragraph, where we answer the Big Question: Does the storm make the grade? Let's see: Its performance is over the top. It pulls focus from the actors. (Even Fangmeier believes that Wahlberg "was a little under-utilized.") And in rare moments, if you look closely, it even lacks sincerity. But even so, it's a wonder to behold, a rocking testament to places moviemaking can take us. So let's give it an A-. Call it nearly perfect.

Gloucester, Mass. - "Come here!" A gaggle of girls calls from the green across Harbor Loop, their voices blending with the call of hovering gulls, who also seem to be ogling the scene.

Mark Wahlberg steps out of the back door of a shiny black car, in town to push his new movie, "The Perfect Storm," and he turns around to face them. "Not now," he yells in his familiar Dorchester accent, his hand shading his squinty eyes from the bright sky. "Not now!" Resigned, and maybe relieved, the girls reply in unison: "We love you!"

But the question of the moment regarding Mark Wahlberg is: Which Mark do they love? Because in his decade of fame and fortune, Wahlberg has been a couple of very different men. The 29-year-old who's being led by publicists onto a dock weighted with international press is an actor whom some claim has already been cheated out of an Oscar nomination for "Boogie Nights." He is a protege and friend of George Clooney, he has made 12 movies (two of them, "Three Kings" and "Boogie Nights," were critical darlings), and he is doing meetings with Hollywood heavies like Tim Burton about future projects. His role in "The Perfect Storm," which will probably rock the box office this weekend, moves him up a peg from the kid-with-promise category to he-could-be-a-star status. As proof, ads for "The Perfect Storm" feature his name alongside Clooney's, above the title.

More surprisingly, he is also a man who claims to attend church and pray regularly, who rescues friends from the same Dorchester streets that almost led him to a life behind bars, and who says, without betraying a hint of irony, "If I can inspire one person to do something, that's a huge accomplishment."

But as anyone with a magazine subscription or a remote control knows all too well, not many years ago Wahlberg's image appeared on the other side of the coin. First, he was a flash-in-the-pan rapper named Marky Mark, an accused homophobe and an unrepentant Dorchester punk who'd spent time in jail at age 16 for a racially tinged assault.

Then, thanks to Calvin Klein, he was an underwear model and a gay icon with a famously airbrushed third nipple. And all along, he was a shock artist who liked to drop his pants onstage, and who staged a tiff at an L.A. party with fellow underwear aficionado Madonna and her entourage.

In short, he was the Perfect Worm.

Now Wahlberg talks about his stormy history both with quiet regret and with the shrewd understanding that it's the dishiest part of his media profile, that it's his sales pitch. Publicists often warn interviewers off unattractive topics -racism, violence, drug abuse and a vacation at Deer Island certainly qualify as unattractive - but no one has tried to control Wahlberg's spin during the "Storm" promotion. Truth is, many young actors in Hollywood - the ones who, like Wahlberg, wear scruffy goatees, stringy hair and loose jeans - would love to add juvenile delinquency to their resumes. Wahlberg's authentic "street" aura, the sense that he actually stole cars and sold drugs, is precisely what Hollywood casting agents and directors are sniffing around for.

And so the tales of Wahlberg's illegalities and immoralities trail him. "They keep writing the same article over and over," he says without much annoyance. "I actually had a talk with the president of one of the studios about it. They were trying to get me to do this interview, this magazine cover, and I said, 'Look, I did something for that magazine before and they just wrote the same story. This is their angle.' And he said, 'That's why you should do it! They (expletive) love it! It's great.' "

What would a more updated Mark Wahlberg story sound like? "It would talk about the obsession with my past and my understanding it, and being OK with it to a certain extent," he says. "But not getting off the path of what I'm trying to do as a person, which is to really develop myself, which is to grow and continue to educate myself.

"Every day I wake up and try to make myself a better man."

In talking about his psychological changes since he put Marky Mark behind him, Wahlberg's hazel eyes admit no possibility that he's putting on a performance or that he's on the automatic pilot that performers succumb to after doing years of press. He bears a heightened sincerity, and indeed, when the interview is over he says he'll call later to elaborate on his changes. Unlike most Hollywood players, he follows through on his promise.

"I've been very fortunate to get out of Dorchester for a little while to see that that's not how the rest of the world thinks," he says. Despite skepticism from friends and colleagues, he goes to church on a regular basis. "I'm trying to make up for all the (expletive) I did. Being raised Catholic is tough, man. I don't look at my girlfriend in a sexual way too long without feeling guilty and blessing myself" - he crosses himself to illustrate. "It helps me, and I believe."

Behind his career, he says, there are larger motives: self-expression and the chance to serve as a role model. "I'm doing all these things to get me where I'm supposed to be. I don't think it's on a movie set. I don't think that's where I belong. But I think I need to have a big enough voice to get my message across. ...

"Making another couple of million dollars, I don't want to jump for joy. It puts a smile on my face for a couple of minutes and it's nice to know that if I want something I can have it, as far as material things. But what I want spiritually, I gotta work for. Every day. I enjoy that work, more than I enjoy my acting."

Wahlberg has accomplished a feat that has eluded many a musician longing for acting legitimacy. The reason: Since his first big role in Penny Marshall's "Renaissance Man," in 1994, he has delivered very few false moments on screen. Like Courtney Love and Ice Cube, he has managed to deliver the goods.

"I realized it was going to be pretty close to impossible," Wahlberg says about the switch to acting. The fact that he was considered a model after his Calvin campaigns didn't help: The only thing funnier than a singer in Hollywood is a model with a script. "Everybody just laughed out loud. They laughed in my face."

He says working with Marshall and Danny DeVito on "Renaissance Man" helped him plot the tricky course. Wahlberg has had a number of mentors over the years, and he mentions Marshall and her advice a number of times during the day. "First and foremost, I didn't care about commercial success. I wanted people to say, 'That kid's good.' That's my whole thing. I don't like to be laughed at. I don't take myself all that seriously, but I take my work very seriously."

"Boogie Nights" in 1997 was the turning point in his acting career. In the company of respected names like Julianne Moore and William H. Macy, he gave a fine central performance as a porn stud. Filmmakers took notice.

Wahlberg says he's proud of "The Perfect Storm," and that that makes it easy to talk to the media right now. During the filming, he felt a pressing responsibility to the men who died when the Andrea Gail sank in 1991, as well as to their families and the people of Gloucester, and he says that responsibility was as intense as the role's great physical demands.

Over the years, he and Clooney, who suggested him for the "Perfect Storm" role, have cultivated a playful rapport that requires them to give each other a hard time. They have become the Mark and George Show, and they decided not to do joint interviews for the movie since they find it impossible to be serious together.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - George Clooney's ``The Perfect Storm'' blew Mel Gibson out of the water at the box office over the weekend.

The movie, based on the true story of a fishing crew battling a behemoth tempest, took in $41.7 million to debut at No. 1 at the weekend box office, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The movie's gross almost doubled that of Mel Gibson's Revolutionary War spectacle ``The Patriot'' which took in $21.7 million Friday to Sunday to finish at No. 2. The animated adventure ``Chicken Run,'' featuring Gibson's voice, came in at No. 3 with $12.8 million.

The weekend's other big release, ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'' opened to a disappointing $6.6 million for fifth place.

The overall box office was good news for Hollywood. After three slumping weekends that put the industry behind last summer's record revenues, the top 12 films this weekend grossed $121.8 million, up 5.3 percent over the same period in 1999.

There also was a prospect that for the five-day weekend through Tuesday, the industry could approach the $198.3 million Fourth of July record set in 1996, when ``Independence Day'' opened.

With three big movies premiering, the Fourth of July had been viewed as the pivotal weekend for Hollywood's summer season, when studios rake in about 40 percent of their revenue.

As late as last week, industry observers figured the box-office crown would be a tossup between ``The Perfect Storm'' and ``The Patriot.''

``I'm surprised by the disparity between the grosses for 'Perfect Storm' and 'Patriot,''' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which tracks movie-ticket sales. ``I didn't think there would be that wide of a gap.''

``The Patriot'' may have been hurt by its R rating and two-hour, 40-minute running time, half an hour longer than ``The Perfect Storm,'' rated PG-13. As a period piece, ``The Patriot'' also had a tough battle against the digital wizardry that created the striking wave action in ``The Perfect Storm.''

``It was a really cutting-edge effort,'' said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released ``The Perfect Storm.'' ``It was the first time anyone's been able to generate those kinds of effects on water.''

Co-starring Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane, ``The Perfect Storm'' was the third-highest grossing movie ever to open over Fourth of July weekend, behind ``Men in Black'' and ``Independence Day,'' which debuted with about $50 million each.

'``Perfect Storm' is the more traditional Fourth of July, big special-effects roller-coaster ride,'' said Dean Devlin, a producer of ``The Patriot.'' ``I'm just happy we weathered the storm. I was really worried they would wipe us out.''

``The Patriot'' broke a stigma in Hollywood that movie-goers aren't interested in the American Revolution, Devlin said. The last such film, Al Pacino's ``Revolution,'' was a flop in 1985.

``I don't think people are sitting around saying they can't wait for the next movie about the American Revolution,'' Devlin said. ``But I definitely think we have broken that curse.''

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.:

1. ``The Perfect Storm,'' $41.7 million.
2. ``The Patriot,'' $21.7 million.
3. ``Chicken Run,'' $12.8 million.
4. ``Me, Myself & Irene,'' $12 million.
5. ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,'' $6.6 million.
6. ``Shaft,'' $6.5 million.
7. ``Big Momma's House,'' $5.5 million.
8. ``Gone in 60 Seconds,'' $5 million.
9. ``Mission: Impossible 2,'' $4.8 million.
10. ``Gladiator,'' $2.4 million.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - George Clooney's maritime disaster picture ``The Perfect Storm'' blew away its competition at the North American weekend box office, whipping up an estimated three-day take of $41.7 million, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.

``The Patriot'' a U.S. Revolutionary War saga starring Mel Gibson, opened in a distant second with $21.7 million, dousing industry predictions of a close race between the big-budget duo.

The holiday weekend's other new entry, ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'' opened at No. 5 with a disappointing $6.6 million.

Last weekend's champion, Jim Carrey's ``Me, Myself & Irene,'' lost half its opening audience as the comedy tumbled to No. 4 with $12.0 million in its second weekend. The British claymatian comedy ``Chicken Run'' slipped one place to No. 3 with $12.8 million, also in its second weekend.

The overall box office ended its three-week losing streak, in terms of comparing ticket sales to year-ago results. According to tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co., the top 12 films grossed $121.8 million, up 5.3 percent from last year, when Will Smith's ``Wild Wild West'' opened at No. 1 with $27.7 million.

``The Perfect Storm'' becomes the third highest July 4 holiday opener ever (after ``Men in Black'' and ``Independence Day''), the best opener in Warner Bros. history (beating ''Lethal Weapon 4'') and the second largest three-day opener this year (after ``Mission: Impossible 2'').

Directed by German filmmaker Wolfgang Peterson (''Air Force One''), the film is based on Sebastian Junger's best-selling book about an ill-fated fishing boat caught up in a freak storm pattern off the coast of Massachusetts in 1991.

Playing the ship's skipper, former ``ER'' heartthrob Clooney proved a major draw for female moviegoers, who accounted for 53 percent of the audience, said Warner Bros. distribution president Dan Fellman. Also helping the movie were its PG-13 rating and the special effects, he added.

With many businesses closed on Monday ahead of the Independence Day holiday on Tuesday, Fellman predicted ``Storm'' would end the long holiday weekend with about $64 million in the till, ``which is going to be a spectacular number.''

``Storm'' averaged $12,440 from 3,407 theaters, and ``The Patriot'' $7,089 from 3,061 theaters.

``The Patriot,'' starring Gibson as a vengeful father who takes up arms against the English in 1776, has grossed $31 million since opening on Wednesday. A Columbia Pictures spokesman predicted the R-rated film's tally would rise to about $42 million after the holiday.

``This is great,'' producer Dean Devlin told Reuters. ``My fear has always been ... that our competition here was much more of a standard summer movie and was just going to wipe us out.''

Exit polls indicated the ``Patriot'' audience was predominantly over 25 and that they loved the movie. Devlin hoped that by the third weekend, the movie would attract younger audiences drawn to budding Australian hunk Heath Ledger.

The last time the July 4 holiday fell on a Tuesday was in 1995, when ``Apollo 13'' ruled the box office with a $25 million lift-off. It went on to gross about $172 million, said Devlin, clearly hoping his movie would follow the same trajectory.

Devlin's producing partner Roland Emmerich directed the film. Together, the pair made ``Independence Day'' and ''Godzilla.''

The live action/animated ``Rocky and Bullwinkle'' failed to overcome critical brickbats and audiences' unfamiliarity with the source material, late animator Jay Ward's 1960s television cartoon series about a flying squirrel and a moose.

``We all knew that it was going to be a challenge making the material relevant,'' said a spokesman for Universal Pictures. The film stars Robert De Niro, who also served as a producer. It averaged just $2,685 from 2,458 theaters.

After 12 days in release, ``Chicken Run'' (DreamWorks) has grossed $41.1 million. The film, from the British creators of the ``Wallace and Gromit'' cartoons, fell just 27 percent from last weekend, the best hold in the top 10. It averaged $4,490 from 2,851 theaters.

Conversely, the 50 percent slide for Carrey's ``Irene'' marked the steepest in the top 10. After 10 days, the comedy has tallied $47.6 million, said a spokesman for Twentieth Century Fox. Its average was $3,919 from 3,062 outlets.

New releases next weekend include ``Disney's The Kid,'' a comedy starring Bruce Willis; and ``Scary Movie,'' a raunchy horror spoof directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans.

Is Mark Wahlberg the most underrated actor in America? Sure, it's taken him only six years to make the transition from novelty rapper and underwear-model to the star of such movies as "Boogie Nights," "Three Kings," and the new "Perfect Storm."

But, on occasion, the artist formerly known as Marky Mark doesn't get the respect he deserves, even from his fellow actors. On the set of the upcoming "The Yards," for instance, Wahlberg had an interesting encounter with co-star Faye Dunaway.

"The one time Faye deigned to talk to me, she said, 'My son is going to do what you do.' So I'm thinking he's going to become an actor," says Wahlberg. "And then she says, 'What goes on in that modeling world of yours? Are there drugs at photo shoots?'"

Wahlberg laughs at the memory of being dissed by Dunaway. But he's not out to rock the boat. He understands where his critics are coming from.

"I remember when I started out, people didn't shun the idea of me being an actor; they laughed out loud," he says during an interview in Gloucester, Mass., where eight months earlier he filmed parts of "The Perfect Storm." "That was OK. I used that. I didn't set out to prove them wrong. I just set out to prove myself right."

With the exception of Dunaway, Wahlberg is popular among his co-stars. After working with Wahlberg in "Three Kings," George Clooney cast the actor in two movies he's producing -- the heavy-metal musical "Metal God" and "Ocean's Eleven," a remake of the Rat Pack caper comedy.

Clooney also talked "Perfect Storm" director Wolfgang Peterson into watching dailies from "Three Kings." No sooner did Petersen see the footage than he wanted Wahlberg on board "The Perfect Storm."

Sebastian Junger, who wrote the non-fiction bestseller on which the movie is based, can't think of another actor who could have done a better job portraying Bobby Shatford, a fisherman on the brink of starting a new life with his devoted girlfriend (Diane Lane).

"Mark Wahlberg is a plausible fisherman and that means everything to me," says Junger. "When he was in Gloucester, he blended in with the locals. I liked George as the captain but he's too good looking to be plausible as anything but an actor. But Mark was absolutely authentic."

If Wahlberg has a signature, it's bringing a shot of soulfulness to characters who might otherwise seem like junkyard dogs. In "Basketball Diaries," he humanized a drug-addicted dropout. In "Traveler," he brought an aura of innocence to a small-time grifter. And in "Boogie Nights," he made audiences believe that a pill-popping porn god was, underneath it all, a misguided kid.

Wahlberg works similar magic in "The Perfect Storm," which is the true-life tale of a boat full of down-on-their-luck Gloucester fishermen who go up against a freak storm and lose their lives.

While Wahlberg has always been a hard worker, "The Perfect Storm" brought out the method actor in him. He's a native of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, which is a mere 40 miles from Gloucester, but the actor decided to spend time in the small fishing village to absorb the atmosphere.

He arrived in town nearly three months before filming began. He moved into Bobby's old room above the Crow's Next, a dive bar where the town's fishermen converge. He spent hours talking to Bobby's mother, brother, and girlfriend.

"I wanted to reach out to Bobby's mom, in particular" says Wahlberg of Ethel Shatford, who is now deceased. "The movie touches very sensitive issues. This tragedy happened less than a decade ago. Bobby's family opened up to me and wanted to share as much as they could. I never met Bobby, and I said I wouldn't do an imitation. I just wanted to be a real guy from this town."

Petersen was shocked at the degree of Wahlberg's dedication. "Mark wanted so much to be a fisherman that he slept at the Crow's Nest in an awful, tiny room," recalls the filmmaker. "He was drinking a lot with the boys in the bar. He was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and not taking good care of himself."

Of his 113 shooting days, Wahlberg estimates he was wet for at least 85 of them. "All the dry stuff took half an hour to shoot and then it was about being in the tank," he recalls of the movie, which was shot in Gloucester and on a Warner Bros. soundstage where a 20-foot-deep tank was constructed.

"I didn't mind being wet except the water was freezing cold, and it was shot at you by these water cannons," says Wahlberg. "So you had 3,000 pounds of pressure blasting 30,000 gallons of water on your head."

By the end of shooting, the movie had taken its toll on Wahlberg. "There's a moment in the movie when I started to cry and Wolfgang said, 'Is that a choice you made as an actor?' I said, 'No I'm really crying.' I was just so drained. It just happened."

Despite the blood, sweat, and tears, Wahlberg believes all the effort was worthwhile. In many ways, the role of Bobby Shatford hit closest to home with him. "I identified with Bobby so much," he says. "In Gloucester, 90 percent of the kids grow up and jump on a fishing boat. It's not like they have many options.

"It's the same thing in my neighborhood although I'd rather fish than sell drugs. I had a rough upbringing. I'd be working with my hands if I didn't do this. My dad, who's a Teamster and a truck driver, loved the movie because it's about guys like him. It's about working men."

Wahlberg fancied himself a rebel when he was growing up as one of eight siblings in a blue-collar household in Dorchester. "My whole thing in being a tough guy was to survive my 'hood," he now says. "Once I did that I could breathe easy."

With the help of his brother Donnie, then a member of the teen singing group New Kids on the Block, Wahlberg recorded a platinum album with his rap group, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. A stint as a Calvin Klein underwear model followed.

Acting was a natural next step for Wahlberg. "Man, I'd been [expletive] my way through life anyway so it made sense to take up acting."

With three movies in various stages of production, Wahlberg is a busy man. Upcoming is "Metal God"; "Ocean's Eleven" with Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Bill Murray; and "The Yards" with Dunaway and Charlize Theron.

After that, the actor will probably do a remake of "Planet of the Apes," which Tim Burton is directing. "People tell me I'm very simian, but Tim wants me to play the Charlton Heston role," says Wahlberg, sounding amazed at his good fortune.

"Looking back, it's like, 'How the hell did I do that?' I didn't try to conquer the world in a day, and the people who have sometimes fall short of their goals."

Wahlberg laughs. "But I don't want to mention any Madonna names."

They weren't a hundred feet high, but some exceptionally powerful waves were smashing against the sides of the Andrea Gail replica as it sat anchored about twelve miles out from Dana Point, California, during production of “The Perfect Storm” late last year. It was a beautiful, crisp, clear day when TIME Los Angeles correspondent Jeffrey Ressner spoke to movie director Wolfgang Petersen on the Gail, but the ship was rocking back and forth so badly that the cast and crew were not at their peak. Mark Wahlberg looked as gray as a ghost from vomiting throughout the morning, while George Clooney was recovering from a bout of the flu. During a lunch break, Ressner spoke to Petersen, who happily chomped away at a boxed lunch of chicken as the mock swordfish ship swayed like a toy boat in a bathtub.

TIME: Are you having fun?

Wolfgang Petersen: I'm having a blast because I'm lucky that these seas don't affect me. I'm perfectly fine. This movie is my kind of thing. I love the water and the sea and being able to do a story about people who make their living out here, doing all this crazy, adventurous stuff to get a paycheck. So I'm having a lot of fun, even if it's a very tragic movie.

Q: How's the cast holding up?

A: Mark (Wahlberg) had the toughest day in his life this morning. He never felt so bad before, and I've never seen anything like it. I felt so bad. This poor guy was hanging over the railing after practically every single shot we did. Once, we actually filmed him in the middle of a take as he was throwing up. (Laughs.) People who get seasick know it's close to suicide time — it's so bad. To have to do a big scene at the same time and act is really pushing it to the limit. It's tough. But he did great. I think nobody will ever suspect anything.

Q: What about the troubles you had shooting at the Warners Studio tank? I heard Karen Allen got banged around pretty severely there and other actors got bumped and bruised.

A: I'd say it comes with the territory. These films are not easy to make. Everybody knows when we go into it there will be physical things — tough stuff to go through like working in a tank with water cannons and the gimbal and the locking bolt and creating 100-foot wave effects. They know it's not easy stuff. I must tell you, I'm immensely impressed how all the actors were up to it. We had no real problems; I could do whatever I wanted to do with them. It was hard for them, yes, but they did it and we're now on day 99 of the shoot. I can say they're all still in one piece and enjoy what we're doing even if it's very, very hard.

Q: Was there any point when you thought things were too tough or dangerous?

A: I must tell you, to see this 70-foot boat — I don't know how many thousands of pounds of steel were held on that gimbal. It was rocking and rolling like crazy and smashed with these huge loads of water, actors being on it, cameras all over the place. It was an awesome sight and sometimes it just stopped your heart. You don't know if at some point things would break — how can a gimbal hold this huge boat? There was always some kind of pressure and tension there when we did that. But it did fine. It worked. Sure, sometimes it broke or didn't always work, but nothing really major happened.

Q: Isn't it easier to do it all with special effects and models these days?

A: Yes, probably. Of course, we're using the help of a computer, because there's no other way to create 100-foot waves and stuff like that. Maybe it could have been a little easier, but we wanted to go for reality and do it as real as possible. I'm a little bit experienced with that kind of filmmaking from “Das Boot,” and in that film when we had depth charges detonating around the submarine or that stuff, we also worked with a huge gimbal. It was really frightening, but I just loved it. The actors like it too because it's not bad to have something really tough to fight against. If tons of water comes over them, it's high adrenaline to act in a situation like that. It also makes it look so real, and reality is everything about this movie. I want it to feel damn real, and I want the audience to feel they're with these people on the Andrea Gail in that huge storm.

Q: How's George holding up?

A: He's great. I couldn't believe what he was doing himself. We have all sorts of stunt people, of course, but he did most of the stuff himself. He was swinging on the top of this outrigger on the soundstage back and forth when that bird smashes a window. He's good. He's in great shape physically and loves that kind of stuff. Today, he's okay. Last time when we were out at sea, he was green. Maybe the lab will have to digitally take the green out of his face. (Laughs.) But we can do anything today, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Q: Can you excuse me for a second. I think I have to hurl. (At this point, your humble correspondent succumbs to a bout of seasickness, while director Petersen takes the opportunity to deliver a monologue into the still-running tape recorder. His statement follows verbatim.)

A: Our reporter is right now throwing up. That's the reason for that little break here. If you find that kind of funny, I don't. But it's a good story anyway, that while we're doing this interview, he asked me to hold the recorder for a moment, and he just went over to the railing and threw up and then came back and we continue the interview. Should I yell for water for you?

Q: I'm okay. (Laughs.) Aside from nauseous journalists, how has the rest of the day been with these rocking waves?

A: I think that scenes we did today, where you see the boat going all the time, where you're inside the wheelhouse, may make audiences a little queasy. If you're outside and watch the boat going, it probably won't — but we were shooting inside the boat today and you saw the horizon going up and down. Who knows what will happen? We'll see?

Q: So you never feel the effects of seasickness? Do you take anything for it?

A: No. I don't take anything and I don't need anything so far, thank God. But I'm German, I'm from the North, I grew up with water and the sea and I'm used to it. Thank God I have no problem with it; the same with my cinematographer. No, it's fine.

GLOUCESTER, Mass. -- Mark Wahlberg feels he is well prepared to take on a society of intelligent apes.

Wahlberg has just been cast in the Charlton Heston role in Tim Burton's planned remake of Planet of the Apes, which begins shooting later this summer.

"I did battle with a shark in The Perfect Storm. Apes can't be that much worse," says Wahlberg.

In the harrowing special- effects thriller The Perfect Storm, Wahlberg plays one of the fisherman aboard the doomed Andrea Gail sword fishing boat.

Before the boat gets lost in the eye of the worst storm in more than 100 years, the crew had its share of traumatic experiences.

At one point, a wave washes a shark on deck and it grabs Wahlberg by the foot.

"It was an animatronic shark that was being operated from another ship. The first day we saw it, we were all amazed how realistic it looked. We couldn't possibly have known just how realistic.

"I rehearsed getting my foot into it. When we actually shot the scene, the shark just grabbed my foot and wouldn't let go. The teeth were razor-sharp, and as soon as the technicians powered it up, the mouth closed another inch," recalls Wahlberg.

Director Wolfgang Petersen was so impressed with Wahlberg's screaming and writhing he kept the cameras rolling longer than he'd intended and certainly much longer than Wahlberg would have preferred.

"It practically ripped my leg off before Wolfgang had the footage he wanted."

The shark was one of many indignities Wahlberg endured making The Perfect Storm.

"We shot for 113 days. For 85 of those, I was soaking wet. When we were shooting the final storm sequences, I was being hit by water cannons with 3,000-pound thrusts and then waves created by 30,000 gallons of water."

The storm that sank the Andrea Gail hit the Grand Banks area off Massachusetts in October of 1991.

Wahlberg was living in Boston.

"I vaguely remember the storm, but I didn't recall the loss of the ship and its crew. You don't pay that much attention to storms because they seem to hit New England all the time."

At the time, Wahlberg was 20 and topping the charts as rapper Marky Mark. He was also gracing billboards and magazine pages as an underwear model for Calvin Klein.

It would be three more years before he would switch creative gears and make his first major movie, Renaissance Man.

In the six years since 1994, Wahlberg has become a popular and respected actor.

His films include The Basketball Diaries, The Corruptor, The Big Hit, Fear, Boogie Nights and last year's Three Kings.

He has already completed the drama The Yards and Metal God, and has been signed for the George Clooney remake of Ocean's Eleven that begins filming in January.

"I'm probably more surprised than most people that I've been able to achieve as much as I have in such a short time. When I first started acting, I thought it was impossible for me to attain this much respect and success in my lifetime, let alone six years.

"I look in the mirror sometimes and wonder how the hell I did it but I don't try to analyse."

Wahlberg grew up in a rough area of Boston, the youngest of nine children. As a youngster, Wahlberg showed promise in both athletics and music. He combined the two skills when he started breakdancing and rapping.

His music career was temporarily cut short when he was sent to jail for armed robbery while he was high on angel dust.

"It was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. I was going nowhere fast."