CUTTHROAT ISLAND
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: There are some good action scenes in
what should be an exciting swashbuckler, but an
unending staccato of bad touches undermines the
enjoyment of Renny Harlan's pirate opus, not the
least of which is that Geena Davis is just not
right as an action hero. The plotting is fine, but
the script needed much more work. Rating: high 0
(-4 to +4)
What is wrong with this action scene? A woman is standing on a coach speeding under a low awning on a building that overhangs the road. Rather than be knocked off she jumps onto the awning, runs through the building, pushing aside obstacles and dives out the window on the far side landing back on the coach. Well, there are two things wrong. First, the architecture has to be very contrived to set up the scene in the first place. 17th Century Jamaica could not have had many buildings with a second story that extends over a road. But secondly someone running an obstacle course will not go faster than speeding horses that have no obstacles. It makes for a nice action scene, but given some thought, it just does not make sense. That in a nutshell is what is wrong with CUTTHROAT ISLAND. It has too many good sequences ruined by touches that do not bear close scrutiny. This is a film that fools you. Just when you start warming up to it and get pulled into the story, it does something stupid or poorly thought out and it loses you again. In the end it is the silly mistakes, the anachronisms, the scenes that don't make sense, the sexual double entendres, and the Bond-like wisecracks that sink a film that otherwise has a good action plot and some impressive visuals.
The year is 1668. Pirates like Black Harry (played by Harris Yulin), his infamous brother Dawg (played by Frank Langella), and his daughter Morgan (played by Geena Davis) rule the blue waves of the Caribbean (played by the blue waves off Thailand). Harry, Dawg, and a third brother each have a piece of a map to a fabulous treasure hidden on Cutthroat Island. Their father wanted them to share but that is not what the brothers plan. This is the basis for what would have been a good fast-paced adventure film if the script by Robert King and Marc Norman had not tried too hard to be cute. But the credits are not over before Morgan's lover is holding a musket on her and she is telling him it won't fire because she "stole his balls." Big yucks here, folks. Too bad it totally ruins the period feel. It is not long before Morgan has inherited her father's crew and the companionship of an erudite thief (Matthew Modine) who join Morgan on her. Together they go off to try to find the treasure. And thereby hangs what could have been a good tale.
Perhaps the biggest blunder was to think that Geena Davis could play a convincing pirate queen and a terrific swordswoman. That just is not her kind of role and even the best stunt doubles cannot fix that. Frank Langella is a bit better as the villainous Dawg, but then he has some experience in swashbucklers. And then just as you are getting used to Davis in the role the film introduces Maury Chaykin of UNSTRUNG HEROES as a writer who is a guest on the pirate ships getting material for "a bestseller." That was the word they used, "bestseller." (Boy, that 17th Century culture was a lot like ours, wasn't it? Now was that before or after the Kennedy assassination?) Of course not all of the problems have to do with period feel. There is the over-trained monkey who apparently understands English, but just enough to make very human gestures. For one painful example Morgan tells the monkey that she is the captain and the monkey salutes her. And once again the viewer is reminded that this is all just a movie.
Director Renny Harlin understands action scenes and does not worry too much about the logic of his scripts. He has explosive action scenes of terrific sea battles and dramatic helicopter shots with birds' eye views of magnificent pirate ships. But he will also have Morgan ready to make love to her doctor just moments after he removesa musket ball from her lower abdomen. Somebody desperately needed to go through this film scene-by-scene and ask, "Does this sequence really makes sense?" With some films you could cannot take out the silly ideas or you would not have a story left. That is definitely not true of CUTTHROAT ISLAND. This is one film that you could tighten up scene after scene and still have a good story and, in fact, a much better piece of entertainment.
This is a mediocre film with a really good old tyme swashbuckler inside fighting to get out. It needed a sharper cutlass. Rate this one a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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