Dead Calm (1989, Phillip Noyce)

Memorial screening for the great Sam Neill. He and Nicole Kidman are a bereaved couple on a sailing voyage when they meet Billy Zane, typecast as a sexy guy who wants to kill you aboard a sinking ship. His stories about his former vessel don’t add up, and when Sam goes to investigate, Billy takes control and speeds away, leaving Sam to sink and die. But this is one of those movies where the best mechanic / sailor / problem solver wins the day, and Neill is up to the task. Kidman’s no slouch either – nothing’s hotter than a woman whose reaction to running out of fuel is to hoist the sails. We get no insight into Zane and what his whole deal was, just a psychopath, finally taken out by a head-exploding flare gun. The same story Orson Welles would partially adapt as The Deep, screenwritten here by Terry “Mad Max” Hayes. Noyce made a movie the same year where Rutger Hauer plays a blind swordsman, and I’ve never watched it for some reason?