Dead Calm (US)
High seas, deep terror
Certificate: R
Running Time: 96 mins
Retail Price: $19.98
Release Date:
Content Type: Movie
Synopsis:
Take an ocean voyage of full-masted fright with Dead Calm, "a spare, smart, seductive piece of moviemaking with enough tension to keep us all hyperventilating for hours" (Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times).
Thriller specialist Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, The Saint) directs three splendid actors - Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut) and Billy Zane (Titanic) in riveting performances. Joe and Rae Ingram (Neill and Kidman) do the right thing and rescue the half-delirious sole survivor (Zane) of a crippled Schooner. But soon the stranger will plunge the unwary pair into an intense battle of cat and mouse. And life or death.
Special Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer
Video Tracks:
Widescreen Anamorphic 1.85:1
Pan & Scan 1.33:1
Audio Tracks:
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 French
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 English
Subtitle Tracks:
French
English
CC: English
Directed By:
Phillip Noyce
Written By:
Charles Williams
Terry Hayes
Starring:
George Shevtsov
Joshua Tilden
Rod Mullinar
Billy Zane
Sam Neill
Nicole Kidman
Casting By:
Wallis Nicita
Liz Mullinar
Soundtrack By:
Graeme Revell
Director of Photography:
Dean Semler
Geoff Burton
Editor:
Richard Francis-Bruce
Costume Designer:
Norma Moriceau
Producer:
Doug Mitchell
George Miller
Terry Hayes
Distributor:
Warner Bros
Your Opinions and Comments
"Spine-tingling. A top-notch thriller in the Hitchcock tradition."
Dead Calm is an exciting thriller from the late
80`s based on the novel by Charles Williams and also one of the best works
from the director Phillip Noyce (known from movies like Patriot Games, The Saint).
I remember seeing this movie many times from the tv
and now that Dead Calm is on dvd it feels just as exciting as years ago.
This is a quite uniq movie, because there`s only three main actors
and it`s amazing how they are able to create so solid & exciting mood.
The cast includes great actors like Sam Neill (Joe Ingram) who is known from John Carpenter`s
movies like Memories of invisible man / In the mouth of madness, Jurassik Park,
Event Horizon plus many others. Then there`s Billy Zane who acted in those
great Back to the future movies and ofcourse Nicole Kidman (Rae Ingram) who made his
big breaktrough to the screens with this movie.
The Dead Calm dvd was one of my first dvd`s after The Thing and the reason why
I bought this was the low price. I gotta tell you "Don`t waste your money into this R2 version"
Why? Because it`s the cutted version (running time 91 mins) and now it feels like some PG-13 version. The most disturbing cutted scenes were: 1.Kidman shooting Billy with the harpoon and
2.Neill shooting Billy with the rocket.
The transfer from old vhs cassette to dvd is quite good and it`s presented in 2.35:1 widescreen.
The video quality is very clear in outdoor scenes and the beautiful ocean just looks superb.
Sadly many indoor scenes were out of sharpness and there`s some grain,
but many times better than any vhs release.
The audio is Dolby Digital Surround 2.0 and the Graeme Revell`s musical score sounds actually
quite nice giving some deepness to the movie. Then again some sequences sounded a bit flat,
but afterall I can`t complain, because the price of this disc wasn`t so high.
The menus were ok, with some scary sounds on the creepy backround, but no extra features,
not even a trailer. If you like this movie, I recommend to buy the U.S "uncutted" version or wait for some better release, but I don`t think there`s gonna be any Dead Calm special edition.
28llimaH[at]moc.liamtoh