WIND
A film review by George V. Reilly
Copyright 1992 George V. Reilly
WIND is a film directed by Carroll Ballard from a script by Rudy Wurlitzer and Mac Gudgeon taken from a story by Jeff Benjamin and Roger Vaughan & Kimball Livingston. It stars Matthew Modine, Jennifer Grey, Stellan Skarsgard, Rebecca Miller, with Cliff Robertson and Jack Thompson.
WIND is a lot of spectacular footage of sailing interspersed with a lacklustre comeback story. The story is loosely inspired by Dennis Connor losing and subsequently regaining the America's Cup in the 80s. (Every four years, a collection of international teams battle it out for the Cup in 12-metre sailboats. Apart from the Australian victory a few years ago, the Cup has been held since the start over a century ago by America.)
Modine is a hotshot sailor who gets picked for the America's Cup team by wealthy skipper Robertson. As the tactician, he makes a miscalculation in the final race, losing the cup to the Australian boat (which is skippered by Thompson). Months later, he rejoins his aeronautical engineer girlfriend Grey (who had been forced off the Cup team by sexism) in the desert where she is building gliders with oddball European designer Skarsgard. Eventually, they decide to build a boat to win back the America's Cup from the Australians, and Robertson's flaky daughter Miller forms a syndicate to fund the effort. The Geronimo, skippered by Modine, wins through to the finals against their old rivals, the Australians, and the film ends with the final race between them.
The boats are the real stars of WIND. Sleek and elegant, they cut through the waves, tacking and overtaking each other heroically. The photography of the sailing scenes is marvelous and the races are compelling. This should be seen in a cinema; a television screen simply can't do the photography justice.
The sailing is noteworthy (I don't know anything about sailing but I was impressed) but the plot leaves much to be desired. Most of the overlong middle portion of the film could have been chopped with no loss: presumably it was cheaper and easier to film in the desert. Modine and Grey and the others turn in reasonable performances, but the script doesn't allow them to become interesting, engaging characters. (The writers apparently think that making the supporting characters be eccentric will make them interesting.)
See this at a matinee.
________________ George V. Reilly
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews