MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Calm’: An Intelligent Thriller

Cracking-good thrillers are harder to find these days, possibly because the audiences for them seem to have gotten more demanding. They insist that smart people not do dumb things--like walk downstairs alone in the dark toward the source of that nasty sound, that fright come from sources other than slathering, 30-foot monsters with toxic slime dripping from their teeth, and that if women are in danger they should do something clever about getting themselves out of it, beyond screaming or ripping a nail dialing 911.

Into this void sails “Dead Calm” (citywide), a spare, smart, seductive piece of real movie making with (almost) every loophole covered, a superlative cast and enough tension to keep us all hyperventilating for hours.

It should be tense; it’s from the Australian-based film production group Kennedy Miller--which, among its other virtues, gave us the “Mad Max” films--and it has been directed by “Newsfront’s” crackerjack Philip Noyce.

A prologue dramatizes why this extended South Pacific voyage of the Ingrams, John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman), is so important. Some months earlier they lost a young son to an automobile accident that almost killed Rae as well. So it’s a voyage of healing and forgetting on the Saracen, their handsome, well-equipped yacht, with John, a career Royal Australian Navy officer, securely in charge and tenderly aware of his wife’s emotionally fragile state.

On their 32nd day out, their tranquility is shattered as they sight another sailing ship on the horizon, then a dinghy being furiously rowed toward them from that boat. In it is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane) a terrified young American survivor of a grotesque bout of food poisoning that has killed everyone aboard his ship, the Orpheus, out of Santa Barbara.

John notices an ad among Hughie’s things: “Free South Seas Cruise. Four young women wanted--must be attractive.” In spite of Hughie’s panicky, desperate condition and his warning that the Orpheus is shipping water and beginning to sink, John takes his own small boat over to investigate.

However, because this is a different sort of thriller, he locks the exhausted Hughie’s cabin door prudently behind him, and also leaves the terrific family dog there with his singularly beautiful wife. (“Dead Calm” is also different enough and smart enough that when this young, burly stranger appears, Rae changes from her swimming clothes to something less provocative. Nice sensibilities prevail.)

But no thriller fan worthy of the name will be surprised that, within minutes, John has made an horrific discovery; Hughie is not where he should be, and every jot of Rae’s ingenuity and stamina will be called upon to stay on top of an increasingly desperate situation.

“Dead Calm” becomes a film maker’s brilliant chess game: two boats, three characters--actually four, since the dog is so memorable--a dinghy and a prescribed amount of ocean. How to build the maximum tension with these simple elements and with only these locations possible?

It begins with Terry Hayes’ taut screenplay, adapted from Charles Williams’ 1963 novel. (As “The Deep” it was made once before, beginning in 1968, by Orson Welles, although it has never been shown and possibly never completed.) Hayes, a Kennedy Miller principal and also co-producer here with Doug Mitchell and George Miller, has pared away a few of the novel’s characters who might slow the film’s juggernaut momentum, although he has found an ingenuous way of our “meeting” some of the missing members anyway.

Director Noyce seems to have been energized by his story’s physical limitations. He uses these elements like a symphony conductor calling on sections of his orchestra: now physical emotion, now the sea itself, now a rainstorm, now technological gadgetry, now brute force, now brute cunning.

And his cast is brilliant. Kidman is known to any who saw the Australian miniseries “Vietnam.” For the rest of us, she is a magnificent discovery. Five-feet-10 and dark-red-haired, she looks a bit like Samantha Egger, but mostly like her arresting self. “Dead Calm” (rated R for violence, sexual and otherwise) is almost non-stop action, much of it brutal, but Kidman seems to approach it from a reservoir of intelligence and with an arc of her character’s growth clearly in her mind. And, of course, there’s this script, which presumes that having spent so much time on a boat, she has learned something useful about her surroundings. How delightful.

Neill is probably one of the screen’s most underrated actors, witness the general overlooking of his exceptional work in “A Cry in the Dark.” He is a man who is called in to star opposite the heaviest hitters (it’s hardly accidental that he has acted twice with Meryl Streep ), when unquestionable authority and a soupcon of sexuality is needed. “Dead Calm” was probably far and away his nastiest assignment physically, yet his presence, sexuality and all, is absolutely vital to the balance of the story.

Zane is the second newcomer, a thick-lashed, black-haired monster with a pretty face, whose derangement we learn about only gradually. It’s a strong, careful, merciless performance and an interesting debut.

Ever since “Carrie” we’ve had after-endings, which by now are commonplace instead of heart-stopping. This ultra-violent one never would be missed, and although the prologue is there to refer to a crucial life-or-death decision that Rae faces later, I’m not sure it was absolutely needed either.

Graham (Grace) Walker’s marvelous production designs, the superb editing of Richard Francis-Bruce, Dean Semler’s camera work, Norma Moriceau’s canny costuming and the strangely eerie part-vocal score of Graeme Revell all contribute to “Dead Calm’s” beautifully controlled tone. For those who like their terror smart but merciless, help is here at last.

‘DEAD CALM’

A Warner Bros. presentation of a Kennedy Miller Production. Producers Terry Hayes, Doug Mitchell, George Miller. Director Phillip Noyce. Screenplay Hayes from the novel by Charles Williams. Editor Richard Francis-Bruce. Camera Dean Semler. Production design Graham “Grace” Walker. Costumes Norma Moriceau. Original music Graeme Revell. With Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, Billy Zane.

Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (younger than 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).