Dead Water is a 2019 thriller about a former Marine who must risk his life to save his wife and best friend from a modern day pirate.
It’s tempting to ask if director Chris Helton‘s seabound action movie Dead Water is worth a look, but that’s really the wrong question. What you should be wondering is who got Casper Van Dien and Judd Nelson in the same movie together and how much of a bonus did they get for doing so. Set mostly on a snazzy new yacht, the two are part of a small cast that settle nicely into the tried and true ruts of a dozen or more others just like it, making it a simple story with all the best intentions, hindered by all the rough waters you might expect.
Fresh from a tour of duty that has left him emotionally scarred, former Marine David ‘Coop’ Cooper (Griff Furst) is not coping with his return to civilian life as well as his lovely wife and television reporter Vivian (Brianne Davis) hopes. With an invitation by David’s friend and former best friend to David’s now dead brother John (Van Dien) – a wealthy surgeon – they join him on his new luxury yacht for a bit of R&R out on the high seas. But tensions run high as David suspects John has eyes on Vivian, and rightfully so, but that’s all interrupted by the arrival of the wounded McLean (Judd Nelson), who has plans all his own.
This isn’t quite as clear cut as it feels set up to be, Helton taking his time in getting out on the waves and establishing who is who and how they are connected. It’s not entirely compelling but it at least it works hard to make it all sort of grounded, refreshingly letting Coop’s haunts remain in the present instead of forcing us into lengthy melodramatic flashbacks of combat. Instead, it allows John and David to unravel their already frayed threads in the confines of the boat’s cabin as John gets drunk and pokes the bear crouching inside his war torn brother.
It’s these early moments that have the larger impact as the trio clearly have secrets kept between then while David was at war and John took care of Vivian (and vice versa?). It’s enough already to load the story with plenty of dramatic possibilities, but the dynamic shifts when McLean joins the story well past the halfway point, turning the intense character drama into a fight for survival. It’s a little disappointing because while the film has pacing issues and a few clunky moments at the start, the time on the boat before the malice Mclean offers is surprisingly affecting as the emotional battles between them ramp up.
Unfortunately, it’s not all that sustainable and begins to take on water the more it keeps going, even with some good performances all around. If one were to dig deeper, the whole thing could be seen as metaphorical for David’s condition, with McLean the physical embodiment of his unresolved issues, though the movie doesn’t quite go the distance in making that stick. Either way, this is well made and while it might not hold up to its potential, lacking late stage momentum as the inevitable drifts into view, it’s a good pick for a weekend rental.