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Dead Calm
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Directed by Phillip Noyce.
Grieving over the death of their son, a married couple decide to take a long yachting trip for relaxation's sake. Their journey takes a dark turn, however, when they rescue a young man from a drifting vessel. The couple soon discover that the other ship's crew had been brutally murdered by their new passenger, and find themselves in a battle of wits against this violent sociopath. Interestingly, a previous attempt had been made at adapting the novel that inspired this film by none other than Orson Welles; footage from his unfinished version, known as The Deep, can be seen in the documentary Orson Welles: The One-Man Band. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
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TonesterTonester Re: Top 5 Sea/Water Movies
by Tonester in Filmspotting
hasn't rated it.
"Agreed on Dead Calm, strip away those 80's cues (Billy Zane's Walkman for one) and this film holds up very well. Phillip Noyce is an underrated director - I have heard that his Rabbit Proof Fence is very good, but haven't seen it.I'd heard that Orson Welles had just about completed a very similar film to Dead Calm based on the same source material in the sixties, but so like so many of his projects he ran out of money before he could edit it. Welles himself was in the Sam Neill role, with Laurence Harvey playing the bad guy.Harvey is brilliantly cold in the original version of The Manchurian Candidate, this sounds like it could have been a lost gem.By the way, I still don't understand why Das Boot didn't get a mention. Somewhat ironically, it's much beloved here in the UK and frequently referenced in comedy and the like. I think this is because the mini series version shown on the BBC in the early 80's was probably the first foreign language movie I ... " [More]
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
Though it's no Knife in the Water, director Phillip Noyce's tense, visceral '80s thriller injects a much-needed claustrophobic jolt into the standard yuppies-in-danger plotline that seemed to be in such abundance in the late '80s and early '90s (see also Pacific Heights and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle). The pulpy influence of director George Miller can be felt in every frame of Dead Calm, from the just-over-the-top performances (the best of which is given by a then-unknown Nicole Kidman), to the copious bloodletting and sordid twists in the film's third act. Dead Calm isn't above pulling the rug out from under its audience, and it succumbs to the lame passage of dialogue here and there, but it's at least precise, economical, and taut -- certainly more so than the routine Hollywood product Noyce would churn out for the next decade or so. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
 



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