Wind is set in the world of competitive yacht racing, where a young sailor (Matthew Modine) is intent on winning the America’s Cup, as well as regaining the affections of his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Grey). As the film opens, Modine chooses to race the America’s Cup instead of staying with Grey. She leaves him and his team loses the race, leaving him devastated. Modine tracks Grey down, finding her with a new boyfriend, who happens to be an engineer. He persuades her and her new boyfriend to help him build a new yacht, which he plans on using in his pursuit to regain the America’s Cup.
Wind is a 1992 film. The movie was directed by Carroll Ballard and starred Matthew Modine, Jennifer Grey, Stellan Skarsgård, Rebecca Miller, Cliff Robertson, Jack Thompson, Peter Montgomery, Ned Vaughn, Elmer Ahlwardt and Saylor Creswell.
Film Review for Wind
Carroll Ballard’s “Wind” is an irresistible end-of-summer dividend that extends the season indefinitely. It’s a bracing fable about those grand 12-meter yachts and their crews that compete for the America’s Cup, the oldest and most prestigious of international sailing trophies. Though called the Hundred Guinea Cup when it was originally offered in England in 1851, it was renamed that year for the boat that won the first race. Since then, except for one brief period in the 1980’s when Australian sailors took the prize, the cup has remained in American hands.
Many things have happened to the cup in the last 140 years. What was once the sport of aristocrats and millionaires (Harold Sterling Vanderbilt won the cup three times in the 1930’s) is now the sport of syndicates. The race is big business. Only associations of the well-heeled can afford the huge cost of building the boats. Their design has become as high-tech as that of supersonic aircraft. Even their specifications have changed.
In 1989, the 12-meter classification was replaced by a new one called the International America’s Cup Class, which, it is said, allows the yachts to be longer and lighter and to carry more sail, thus to be faster. “Wind,” which is fiction suggested by fact, doesn’t bother itself too much with such details, although it seems to be embracing a sort of transition period between the old 12-meter yachts and those of the new class. That’s the impression given when, near the film’s breathtaking finale, one of the competitors breaks out a mammoth spinnaker informally called the “whupper,” for the sudden, impressive “whup” sound it makes when it catches the wind.
Purists may object to the ways “Wind” oversimplifies the business of big-yacht sailing. The film foreshortens the years spent on the design and building of the boats and the training of their crews. Television coverage of the last two America’s Cup competitions gave armchair sailors a better idea of the technical complexity of today’s racing than the film offers.
Yet “Wind” does something else. Mr. Ballard, who earlier directed “The Black Stallion” and “Never Cry Wolf,” and John Toll, the masterly cinematographer, give the audience a real sense of the heady excitement, primal joy and serenity of ocean sailing, even during big-stakes competitions. It’s a high that transcends all physical sensations of fatigue, cold, wet and especially noise. The sea is anything but silent when one of these great sleek hulls is sailing close to the wind on a day of serious wind and chop.
Although “Wind” seems to have originated as a vague idea about the America’s Cup, the screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer and Mac Gudgeon is more than just serviceable. It’s hip, feather-light and sweet-natured. It’s about four demonstrably bright young people who, somewhat in the tradition of Mickey and Judy wanting to put on a show, decide to design and build their own boat to win back the America’s Cup, recently lost to an Australian crew. They build their boat not in a barn, but in an airplane hangar on the salt flats of Utah.
The head of the group is Will Parker (Matthew Modine), the American helmsman and tactician responsible for the United States’ defeat, who now wants to reclaim the cup. His companions are Kate Bass (Jennifer Grey), his former girlfriend and Will’s equal as a sailor; Joe Heiser (Stellan Skarsgard), Kate’s new lover, who is also a whiz when it comes to boat design, and Abigail Weld (Rebecca Miller), the bored and slightly nutty daughter of the millionaire Newport, R.I., yachtsman who was Will’s skipper in the race with the Australians.
Cliff Robertson appears as Morgan Weld, Abigail’s father, and Jack Thompson is Jack Neville, the Australian skipper with whom Will competes in the spectacular races that give the film its poetic heart. There is an almost magical simplicity to the narrative. A lot of relevant material is dealt with off screen: the financing of the new boat, and the trials and early races leading up to the climactic competitions that end the film off western Australia.
“Wind” has something of the manner of teen-age adventure fiction, but it is played by adults with recognizable passion and genuine humor. Will, Kate, Joe and Abigail are a most engaging crew of eccentrics. Mr. Modine, Ms. Grey, Mr. Skarsgard and Ms. Miller are a collective delight, never quite behaving in ways prescribed by conventional fiction. The characters’ love lives are sloppy, disordered variations on the ideal. Mr. Modine’s Will still loves Kate but, hoping to get their help, he blithely accepts her living arrangements with Joe six months after she has left him. Will puts first things first.
The other three are equally un predictable. Kate is an amused but independent, no-nonsense type. Joe, who plays the cello to relax, is forever unsurprised. Abigail is a rich, abandoned brat who is about to do the right thing.
“Wind” is not commonplace movie making. The sailing sequences, including one short, very funny race off Newport involving the kind of small boats you and I might sail, surpass anything I’ve ever seen on the screen. There are collisions at sea, wrecked spinnakers and freak accidents, like the one during a race when a sailor finds himself hanging upside down from the mast as the other boat gains. These things exhilarate as they threaten to stop the heart. The end is euphoria.
Wind (1992)
Directed by: Carroll Ballard
Starring: Matthew Modine, Jennifer Grey, Stellan Skarsgård, Rebecca Miller, Cliff Robertson, Jack Thompson, Peter Montgomery, Ned Vaughn, Elmer Ahlwardt, Saylor Creswell
Screenplay by: Rudy Wurlitzer, Mac Gudgeon
Production Design by: Lawrence Eastwood
Cinematography by: John Toll
Film Editing by: Michael Chandler
Costume Design by: Marit Allen
Set Decoration by: Bobbie Frankel
Music by: Basil Poledouris
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sensuality.
Distributed by: TriStar Pictures
Release Date: September 11, 1992
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