Charlie wrote: I'm sorry, but the Dead Calm movie did not
have such a happy ending. The Billy Zane character got
knocked off and all that, but had he not succeeded in messing
up these people's lives? I didn't get a feeling of the
triumph of
good.
************* Actually I'm a little a bit uncomfortable
arguing with your namesake over Dead Calm. ;-) But here
goes:
Well, you have a valid point there. Some of that bad stuff
simply can't be reversed, can it? The wife gets raped,
doesn't she? And the guy has to do some hard mechanical work
on a sinking ship littered with bodies. Yuk. There always
seems to be a certain amount of ambiguity about whether an
ending is happy or not, even in hardboiled. Even if the bad
guy gets caught, a good guy got murdered, right?
But yes, I think that the ending of the movie Dead Calm
was
"happy". The crazy dude pays the big price for his sins.
There is justice.
And there is something else I read out of the movie that
maybe wasn't there. I believe that she is redeemed in the
end. Why is it she can't bring herself to kill this guy, even
though she has multiple chances? It's because she takes
responsibility for a death earlier in her life, and she
cannot come to terms with it and it's making her life a
living hell and she cannot bring herself to end another's
life, even if he is so very deserving.
I believe that when she ultimately desires and gets the
crazy's death, she finds closure on her child's death. She is
redeemed. They have each other. Insurance will cover the
damage to the boat, and they sail off into a splendid sunset
on the deep blue sea. Life is good. Pass me one of them ice-
cold Coronas and a big slice of lime. WAHOOO!
miker
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