Dead Calm (1989)
Director: Phillip Noyce
Starring: Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, Billy Zane
Dead Calm is a film driven by performances. There are only three characters: John Ingram (Neill), his wife Rae (Kidman), and Hughie (Zane). Because so much of the movie is about those three characters and the interplay between them, if even one of their performances hit a sour note, things simply wouldn't work. As it turns out, Dead Calm is a bit of a mixed bag, but it is largely a success, and most of the issues have nothing to do with the actors. For the most part, they are pitch-perfect.
Sam Neill is fine here, and has an easy chemistry with Kidman that works well (the scenes they share over the CB radio are particularly moving and convincing). But his role is a restrained one, and he spends a great deal of the movie removed from the action. This show is really about Kidman and Zane. And both are great. It's a little difficult to reconcile the Kidman from Dead Calm with the mega-famous superstar we know as Nicole Kidman today because the actress has undergone a pretty remarkable physical transformation in the years since 1989. But it is clear here that she had incredible potential from the beginning.
Kidman is called upon here to display some serious range, and she pulls it off with flying colors. Throughout the course of Dead Calm, Kidman is alternately grief-stricken, affectionate, meek, sexy, and menacing. A pretty impressive laundry list of qualities, but she manages to convey each one in a believable manner. The character of Rae owes no small doubt to Ellen Ripley in Alien. She begins the movie utterly helpless, and by the end she is wielding a harpoon gun with the same ferocity that Sigourney Weaver once used to threaten Xenomporhs.
Of course, the transformation of Rae would not be so believable were Zane not so threatening as the villain, Hughie. Zane is another actor who has had quite a journey since the release of Dead Calm. He had a brief, mostly failed run as a Hollywood leading man in movies like The Phantom, and after his (arguably) most famous role in Titanic, he has settled into a career as the stock villain in direct-to-video masterpieces like The Scorpion King 3. 1989 Billy Zane is another animal altogether though. He is relentlessly sexy and unsettling as Hughie here. There is an unhinged and utterly unpredictable quality to his performance that is magnetic. And the chemistry between he and Kidman is also palpable, although from a story perspective, it's hard to know how much is real, and how much is imagined (one of the themes of Dead Calm).
The performances, coupled with a chilling soundtrack and superb cinematography, give Dead Calm a real sense of tension and dread that makes the movie entertaining. The scenes on the boat with a panic-stricken Kidman attempting to outwit Zane are particularly enthralling (though viewers who are claustrophobic may want to avoid them, and this movie, altogether). From a narrative viewpoint, the story works on several levels. Near the beginning of the film, Neill encourages Kidman to "get strong", and we witness that growth in the film. In the process, we see the two protagonists grow together and overcome a terrible tragedy.
Unfortunately, the issue is the ending. For a film that clocks in a relatively brisk 96 minutes, Dead Calm has more false endings than the last Lord of the Rings movie. And by the time it does actually wrap up, you'll be wishing it had ended two endings earlier. The ending is so bad (and so tacked-on) in fact, that you wonder if director (Phillip Noyce) truly intended for the film to end that way, or whether he was forced into it by the studio or some other external force. For a movie as subtly brilliant as Dead Calm, it's a shame that it ends in a manner you would expect from a bad Friday the 13th sequel. Fortunately, we have the option of turning off the DVD player ten minutes or so before the movie actually ends. If you can manage to do that, Dead Calm is pretty close to perfect.
Verdict: 8/10
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