I almost didn't pick this up because I was sure it was a spin-off of Pirates of the Caribbean, but I was wrong. In actuality it was made before that movie and despite first appearances it can stand on its own. It's also Geena Davis, the gal that I associate with comedy-romance movies, the mushy and touchy-feely kind of movie that generally bore me. It's not that I can't appreciate a good comedy-romance, I just need to be in a certain kind of mood to watch those kinds of movies. But you know that Geena Davis is a brilliant actress and I loved her in The Long Kiss Goodnight with Samuel Jackson so I was glad I saw it. I wasn't disappointed as the swash buckling Morgan Adams and Matthew Modine steal my heart early on and I started rooting for the pirates on the edge of my seat. They were trying to piece together 3 pieces of a map to find an uncharted island that holds a rich pirate treasure hidden in it. The story is engaging, the action is good, great sound, and outstanding performances from the cast.

I know what you thinking, we ripped Cutthroat Island before, but what critics didn't know that it's a swashbuckling pirate movie. Yeah, even with the bad dialogue, poor production value, and Geena Davis performance as a female pirate were lackluster at best. Suddenly, Carolco returned to sender and destroyed the film industry as becoming the latest victim of facing bankruptcy soon after the film crashed and burned hard at the box office and holds the (now-defunct) record of Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time with an embarrassing $98.1 Million budget only to reach $60 Million.Make no mistake, the film was bad. But I haven't even watched it on TV or appearing on other premium networks. To me, I felt like it should've add more money to make and director Renny Harlin still has lots of gas in the tank left for his ailing career.But Cutthroat Island is one of those films that is criminally underrated. And much like the success of the long-running Pirates of the Caribbean series, Cutthroat Island never had a chance of becoming a potential franchise too. But if you haven't seen this classic, it's worth a rental or buy on Blu-Ray.

From the director of Die Hard 2 (1990) and the collective pens of six screenplay writers comes Cutthroat Island (1995) the brazenly cheesy pirate saga of ill repute. Starring Oscar winner Geena Davis, Oscar nominated Frank Langella and…umm…Matthew Modine, Cutthroat Island is the tall tale of a female pirate captain (Geena Davis) attempting to find the fabled titular island before her heinous uncle (also a pirate captain and also Frank Langella) does. The key to her triumph; a con artist named Shaw (Modine) who knows Latin and can translate the map.This movie is about as boilerplate as one can get. The characters are one dimensional, the dialogue stilted, the special effects; a masterwork in bombastic nineties ridiculousness. Yet there's something near-magical about this particular train wreck. Nearly ever scene has explosions and sword fighting mayhem all of which are well choreographed if sloppily done.Geena Davis tries her absolute hardest to pull off her Captain Morgan (yes her name is Captain Morgan), a lord knows her 6 foot frame would have made her an obvious choice for hard fighting buccaneer. I commend her for the physicality she brings to the role managing to get punched in the face and break through candy glass unfazed. But her elegance and beauty betray her. Her smiles are always genuine and her body language is always feminine; maybe the demeanor of a bourgeois suffragette at the turn of the century but not that of a bloodthirsty rogue pirate.Most of the blame for this film's so-bad-it's-good quality lies squarely with the director Renny Harlin who also directed the recent clunker The Legend of Hercules (2014). Harlin comes from the school of grandiose action films before CGI. Like Guy Hamilton and John McTiernan before him, swift, consistent flow of action takes precedence over story, human characters and all the other little things that don't matter. They accomplish this with elaborate set pieces, daring stunt work and, as mentioned before, lots and lots of explosions. Unlike Hamilton and McTiernan, Harlin has no artistic instinct behind the camera. The cinematography is grimy and brown and the set, while expensive looking is nevertheless noticeably fake. It's as if Harlin wanted to update the swashbucklers of Douglas Fairbanks yet didn't bother to update anything except for the actors.Then there's the writing which is borderline absurd. What passes for witty one-liners, are groan worthy puns and non-sequiturs with little bearing on anything of consequence. Everything else is exposition. It's as if the six writers of the film all hated each other, were trapped in a room together, unable to leave until they came up with something and poised to be overly critical of everything the other said and did. What's left is a script with no creativity or panache. In being so bland the authors of this rubbish commit the cardinal sin of writing: letting the audience notice the exposed frame of the writing instead of the action on the screen.Yet, at the end of the day, Cutthroat Island is too harebrained to be taken seriously. If you go in with low expectation and a tendency to not take yourself or your films seriously, you might come out of a viewing on top. There is intrinsic value in watching a movie like Cutthroat Island, especially if you plan on going into a career in film. Movies like this serve to make you acutely aware of what not to do.http://www.theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com

Cutthroat Island is directed by Renny Harlin and written by Robert King and Marc Norman. It stars Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin, Patrick Malahide, Stan Shaw and Rex Linn. Music is scored by John Debney and cinematography by Peter Levy.A film of many flaws, with a reputation akin to it being the devil of big budget failures, it is, however, a wonderful piece of piratical entertainment if you are prepared to see past the monetary excess. Famously cited as the film that bankrupted Caroloco Pictures, the truth is that Carolco was going under anyway, the studio had filed for bankruptcy before Cutthroat Island had even been released, the box office performance was irrelevant, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. And while no amount of hard sell marketing could have gotten the film to make back the $98 million spent making it, it received no support from distributor MGM who were in the process of being sold, so finances for marketing were not available.Harlin's movie has all the pirate movie ingredients crammed in to the plot, though it is a standard plot that sees Davis as female pirate Morgan Adams who leads her charges on a quest to find the ultimate treasure hoard. Problem is that the map is in three parts, each part held by separate people, one of which is Morgan's vicious Uncle Dawg (Langella). The hunt and race is on, and Harlin doesn't pause for breath, he's a kid in a sweet shop armed with wads of cash, but the money, as gargantuan as it is, is there on the screen; well except for the hiring of better actors that is. Two magnificent ships were built for the production and they are magnificent, the costumes, the sets, pyrotechnics, exotic locations (Malta and Thailand standing in for 1668 Jamaica), stunning sound editing and visual thrills, all high on value and all cloaked by a tremendously robust score from Debney.Action junkies are well served here, with wild horse drawn carriage chases, sword fights aplenty, ships in side by side explosive battle, mucho perilous situations, bodies falling from heights or thrown in the sea, and we even get a comic relief simian! Who, as it turns out, is one of the best actors on show. It's hard to believe that a pirate action film such as this would not be better appreciated had it been released in the last ten years, and I say that not just because of the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but more so that the blunderbuss popcorn movie has greater support these days. There's a good portion of the movie loving faithful who just want to be entertained, where rapid thrills are a requisite, not well drawn characterisations and thespian class. Judged on those terms then Cutthroat Island is a winner for sure.Main problems are the clunky script and the three pronged miscast errors in the lead roles. Davis (erm, wife of Harlin) is full of guts, really attacking the material with gusto, but she never convinces, it always feels like a caricature and she's uncomfortable delivering key lines. She would prove herself a fine action actress a year later with The Long Kiss Goodnight (also with Harlin directing), but she's woefully out of place here. With Davis demanding more and more screen time for her character, the role of Shaw began to thin out, which was too much to bear for Michael Douglas who bowed out late in the day. In came Matthew Modine, zero chemistry with Davis, a bland acting style and as far removed from the period setting as you could get. Langella just isn't menacing as the main villain of the piece, a very good actor in the right role, but not here and some of his attempts at nastiness feel like panto season has started early.Problems for sure, but wade through some of the misconceptions and poisonous press and you will find a film desperately aiming to please you, with much on offer for the pirate movie fan to savour. 7/10