The year was 1989, and a very young, fresh-faced Nicole Kidman was on her way to becoming a household name in the entertainment industry. This was also the pre-Tom CruiseDays of Thunder, Far and Away, and Eyes Wide Shut era of the early to mid-90s that almost took her career in the wrong direction. When she landed the lead role of Rae Ingram in director Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm, it would prove to be a breakout performance that put everyone on notice that she would be around for a while. Here we are, 35 years later, and she is still regarded as an A-lister and one of the top talents in Hollywood. But what may have caught many by surprise is that she was nearly outshined by a young American actor, Billy Zane, whose run as a psychopath stranded at sea was almost as noteworthy as the star turn for Kidman. And while Dead Calm may go down in the annals of cinema history as the launching pad for the Australian-American performer, it would be a mistake to overlook what is one of the most brilliantly unhinged characters of the 80s that propelled Zane into a new stratosphere as well.

What Is ‘Dead Calm’ About?

Rae and John Ingram (Sam Neill) have just lost their son in a tragic car accident and have sought refuge in the tranquil open waters to help soothe their troubled minds. When they come upon a man in a small dinghy claiming to be the lone survivor of a distressed ship, they take him aboard. Hughie Warriner (Zane) claims that he managed to survive but is unsure about the well-being of the others on board. Being the good Samaritan and a responsible human being, John sets out in the dinghy to see if he can helpany survivors on the troubled vessel. Leaving Rae alone with Hughie on their 30-foot yacht after just meeting him and taking his word as truth proves to be a significant miscalculation by John and the catalyst for a harrowing and thrilling movie.

‘Dead Calm’ Is Proof That Crazy People Don’t Know They’re Crazy
Image via Warner Bros.

What Zane does so well as he becomes engaged with Rae in a cat-and-mouse game for control of the boat is deliver a character clearly out of his mind, but he seems to be the only one unaware of his psychosis. Zane has always brought a wonderfully whimsical flair to most of his roles, and in Dead Calm, Noyce gives him the space to explore his organic screwiness with a darker, more sinister side. The end result is one of the most memorable and complex villains that comes close to stealing the show from Kidman since you can’t take your eyes off of him.

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Zane has a young Marlon Brando quality about him, and the character of Hughie Warriner and his piracy on the open seas feels like something a young Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now might have been involved with as a younger man. Hughie’s devil-may-care attitude and thousand-yard stare remind the viewer of the tortured Kurtz. Moreover, his emptiness and lack of emotion make Zane’s version of this untethered character seem much more dangerous. He is so out of touch with reality that he actually believes that he can replace John and sail away with Rae into the sunset.

Billy Zane Is Deliciously Diabolical in a Childlike Way in ‘Dead Calm’

You have to have either enormous hubris or extreme naivete to believe that you can come aboard a woman’s boat, send her husband off to what is almost certain death under false pretenses, and then step into John’s role, believing things would continue as if nothing had happened. For Zane’s Hughie, it tilts toward a childlike disconnect from acceptable adult behavior. Hughie comes across as a boy trapped in a man’s body in many ways, and it’s his complete misunderstanding or lack of concern regarding the dire nature of his and Rae’s predicament that makes the film work so well.

He acts like a teenager with a crush on the neighbor girl, but in reality, she is a traumatized woman who has just lost a child and now has a madman trying to seduce her and leave John for dead. Rae has to both placate his awkward sexual advances while also keeping a level head so she can rescue John, who has discovered dead bodies on a sinking ship and is about to drown. Zane and Kidman have terrific chemistry in a relationship that is viewed entirely differently by the two principles involved; there is a palpable duality as both mother and child and a captive with her captor. The back-and-forth battle of wits allowed Kidman to take the next step in her career, but it also served as a springboard for Billy Zane as one of the most formidable actors heading into the 1990s and beyond. He parlayed Dead Calm into more significant, big-budgeted films like Memphis Belle and James Cameron’s epic Titanic.

Your changes have been saved Dead Calm Release Date April 7, 1989 Runtime 96 Minutes

Dead Calm is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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