Dead Calm (film)

''Dead Calm'' is a 1989 Australian psychological thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, produced by George Miller, and starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. The screenplay by Terry Hayes was based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Williams.

Filmed around the Great Barrier Reef, the plot focuses on a married couple, who, after tragically losing their son, are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.

Notably, the movie is the first successful film adaptation of the novel, after Orson Welles worked for a number of years to complete his own film based on it titled '' The Deep'', though it ultimately went unreleased and uncompleted.

''Dead Calm'' was generally well received, with critics praising Neill, Kidman, and Zane's performances and the oceanic cinematography. It was nominated in eight categories at the 1989 Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Film, and won four. Modern retrospective analyses have been favorable, with ''The New York Times'' naming it one of the 1000 best films ever made

Plot

A woman named Rae Ingram is involved in a car crash which results in the death of her son. Her older husband, Royal Australian Navy officer Captain John Ingram, suggests that they head out for a vacation alone on their yacht. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they encounter a drifting schooner that seems to be taking on water. A man, named Hughie Warriner, rows over to the Ingrams' yacht for help. He claims that his ship is sinking and that his companions have all died of food poisoning.

John rows over to the other ship. Inside, John discovers the mangled corpses of the other passengers and video footage indicating that Hughie may have murdered them. On John's boat, Hughie awakens, knocks out Rae and sails it away.

Left behind, John attempts to keep Hughie's ship from sinking and catch up with them. Rae awakens. John gets through to her on the radio, but the water damage makes him unable to reply save for clicks on his ship's radio receiver. He can respond only yes or no to her questions. Hughie eventually tries to convince Rae to be friends with him. Rae accepts, attempting to earn his trust. She soon learns that Hughie's boat is too far gone and will sink in the next hours.

To save John, Rae decides to seduce Hughie and gain his trust long enough for her to get to the shotgun on deck. She and Hughie start to kiss and undress, before Rae stalls for time by saying that she has to go to the bathroom. She runs on deck to assemble the shotgun, but her dog follows her. Before she can load the gun, the dog starts barking, causing Hughie to go investigate. In a panic, Rae leaves the gun behind. She takes Hughie to the bedroom where she buys herself more time by allowing him to have sex with her.

Rae later fixes some lemonade and places a heavy dose of her prescription sedatives into the drink, anticipating that she could trick Hughie into drinking it. Claiming to go get dressed, Rae returns for the shotgun and is discovered soon after. As a storm approaches, Rae and Hughie come to blows. Hughie takes hold of the shotgun, but the effects of the sedative cause him to aim poorly and shoot the radio by mistake. Rae eventually takes hold of a harpoon gun and locks herself in the bedroom. As the door opens, she fires off a harpoon and ends up killing her dog. Hughie comes out of hiding to strangle her, but passes out from the drugs. Rae ties him up and sails back to rescue John. Hughie recovers consciousness, cuts himself, and reaches Rae, who shoots him in the shoulder with a harpoon and knocks him unconscious. She then sets him adrift in the yacht's life raft and continues to look for John.

Meanwhile, the damage and the storm have caused the schooner to sink almost completely. John eventually sets the wreck on fire to signal his location. At dusk, Rae notices the flames and sets course to the faint fire on the horizon. Meanwhile, John is waiting on a piece of floating debris. After night falls, the pair reunite.

Later they find the life raft and Rae shoots it with a flare, setting it on fire. The next day, John washes Rae's hair and prepares breakfast for her. A heavily injured Hughie eventually begins to strangle her. While Rae struggles, John arrives from below deck and shoots Hughie in the mouth with a flare, killing him.

Cast

* Nicole Kidman as Rae Ingram
* Sam Neill as John Ingram
* Billy Zane as Hughie Warriner
* Rod Mullinar as Russell Bellows
* Joshua Tilden as Danny
* George Shevtsov as Doctor
* Michael Long as Specialist Doctor
* Lisa Collins as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
* Paula Hudson-Brinkley as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
* Sharon Cook as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
* Malinda Rutter as 'Orpheus' Cruise Girl
* Benji as Dog (as Benji U.D. A.D.)
* John Simmit as Dog Owner (uncredited)

Unfinished previous adaptation

The film is based on the novel '' Dead Calm'' by American author Charles Williams. Orson Welles had optioned the film rights in the mid-1960's. Under the title ''The Deep'', Welles shot the film between 1966 and 1969 off the coast of Yugoslavia. The prospective film starred Laurence Harvey as Hughie, Michael Bryant as Ingram, Oja Kodar as Rae, and Welles himself played Russ Bellowes. Jeanne Moreau played Hughie's wife Ruth, a character present in the original novel but cut out of Noyce's film.

Welles' production was plagued by financial and technical problems, and effectively halted at the end of 1969. Principal photography remained incomplete, and Laurence Harvey's death in 1973 effectively ended any hope of completing the film. The original film negative is considered lost, though two workprints survive, and footage from the film has been displayed since.

Production

Producer Tony Bill had tried to buy the rights from Welles but was never successful. He mentioned this to Phil Noyce, giving him a copy of the book in 1984. Noyce enjoyed the book and showed it to George Miller and Terry Hayes, who were enthusiastic. Miller managed to persuade Oja Kodar, Welles's companion, who controlled the rights to the novel, to sell the book to Kennedy Miller. David Stratton, ''The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry'', Pan MacMillan, 1990 p263–265Brian McFarlane, "Phil Noyce: Dead Calm", ''Cinema Papers'', May 1989 p6–11

The book features several other main characters (including Hughie's wife and survivors John finds on the Orpheus), and presented Hughie as a nominally asexual manchild. It also goes into further detail about what caused Hughie's psychotic break.

Filming

The film was shot over a 6-month span in Queensland's Whitsunday Islands beginning in May 1987. George Miller directed some sequences himself, including one where Sam Neill's character is tormented in the boat by a shark. This scene ended up being dropped from the final film.

The sequence in which John kills Hughie with a flare was filmed at the request of Warner Bros seven months after principal photography finished. As written, the film originally ended with Rae setting Hughie adrift on a life raft to ostensibly die at sea; the studio was unhappy with this ambiguity and wanted a definite fate for the film's antagonist.

Sam Neill met his future wife Noriko Watanabe during filming.

Music

The synthesizer-driven film score was composed and performed by New Zealand musician Graeme Revell, of the industrial group SPK. ''Dead Calm'' was Revell's first ever film score, and earned him an AFI Award for Best Original Music Score.

Reception

Box office

''Dead Calm'' grossed $2,444,407 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to $4,253,268 in 2009 dollars. It grossed $7,825,009 in the U.S.

Critical reception

''Dead Calm'' has an 84% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews, with a rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus states that "Nicole Kidman's coiled intensity and muscular direction by Phillip Noyce give this nautical thriller a disquieting sense of dread". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

According to David Stratton of '' Variety'', "throughout the film, Nicole Kidman is excellent" and "she gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy" and "though not always entirely credible" the picture "is a nail-biting suspense pic, handsomely produced and inventively directed." Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' wrote that the film "generates genuine tension." Desson Howe of ''The Washington Post'' praised the film's creators: "Noyce's direction moves impressively from sensual tenderness (between husband and wife) to edge-of-the-seat horror. With accomplished editing by Richard Francis-Bruce and scoring by Graeme Revell, he finds lurking dangers in quiet, peaceful waters."Howe, Desson
'Dead Calm'
''The Washington Post'' (7 April 1989)

On the other hand, Caryn James of ''The New York Times'' felt that the film was "an unsettling hybrid of escapist suspense and the kind of pure trash that depends on dead babies and murdered dogs for effect," and that ''Dead Calm'' "becomes disturbing for all the wrong reasons."James, Caryn
"Critics' Pick: Reviews/Film; A Psychological Drama Of Nightmares and Death"
''The New York Times'' (7 April 1989). A number of critics faulted the film's ending as being over-the-top, with the ''Post''s Howe writing, "... while it's afloat, 'Dead Calm' is a majestic horror cruise. ... For much of the movie, you're enthralled. By the end, you're laughing."

The acting was generally considered excellent, with Zane being cited for injecting "unforgettable humanity and evil puckishness into his role" and being "suitably manic and evil." And while Rita Kempley of ''The Washington Post'' wrote "what's most fascinating about it is Rae's place in the pantheon of heroines, an Amazon for the '90s," the ''Times James called Kidman's character "tough but stupid."

The film is listed on ''The New York Times'' Top 1000 Movies list,Top 1000 Movies List
''The New York Times''. derived from editor Peter M. Nichols' ''The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made'' (St. Martin's Griffin, 2004). The film was partly the inspiration for 1993 Hindi-language film '' Darr''.

Awards and nominations

See also

* ''The Deep'' (unfinished film)
* Cinema of Australia

References

External links

*
*

''Dead Calm''
at Oz Movies
*

Dead Calm at the National Film and Sound Archive

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dead Calm (Film)
1989 films
1980s psychological thriller films
1989 thriller films
Australian thriller films
CinemaScope films
Films scored by Graeme Revell
Films about survivors of seafaring accidents or incidents
Films based on American novels
Films based on thriller novels
Films directed by Phillip Noyce
Films set in Australia
Films set in the Pacific Ocean
Films shot in Queensland
Seafaring films
Warner Bros. films
Kennedy Miller Mitchell films
Films produced by Doug Mitchell
Films produced by George Miller (filmmaker)
Films set on boats
1980s English-language films
1989 in Australian cinema
English-language thriller films
Films based on works by Charles Williams (American author)