Phillip Noyce sailed Nicole Kidman from the Australian small-time to the Hollywood big screen with his adaptation of Charles Williams' Dead Calm, a nautical thriller about a couple, Kidman's Rae Ingram and her husband John (Sam Neill) - characters who first appeared in Williams' Aground - on a sailing trip to recover from tragedy, but while becalmed they spot a yacht in distress and make the mistake of stopping to help the yacht's sole survivor (Billy Zane, in 1989, youthful and smouldering) - the confined-space thrills-at-sea has a beautiful simplicity with the three characters in a sphere of action no larger that just the speck of a yacht in the ocean..
★★★★☆
CINECAL: ONE SEMTENCE REVIEWS
