Cutthroat Island
THE STORY: I love pirate movies. "Treasure Island" and "Long John Silver returns to Treasure Island"; are two of my favorite flicks. I like the movie "Horatio Hornblower" too. I guess I just like the idea of sailing the seven seas with a tall ship and all the swashbuckling. That's why I rented this movie. Now I know it was pretty much despised when it first came out, but I don't think it was all that bad.
Morgan Adams is a pretty tough chick. She'd have to be. her father, Black Harry, is a pirate. So are her uncles, Dog and Mordecai. Dog however, is EVIL! Well, more evil than other pirates. He kills Black Harry trying to get his third of a map to Cutthroat Island, where untold riches are buried. Black Harry lives long enough to give Morgan his part of the map...which has been tattooed to his scalp. (she had to scalp him) Morgan takes command of his ship the Morning Star and goes to Port royal, Jamaica to find someone who can speak Latin and decipher the map. With her crew is a writer, John Reed, who travels with pirates so he can chronicle their adventures, Glasspoole, a big black guy, Blair, a big white guy and Tom Scully. Scully was the only one to challenge her captaincy, so we know way ahead of time that he'll be trouble.
Morgan finds her translator in the form of William Shaw, a thief that was caught by the Governor, Aimsley and Lt. Trotter. He's being sold into slavery and Morgan buys him. This leads to a fight when the soldiers at Port royal learn who she is...she's got a price on her head....but she makes a daring escape. The governor catches up with reed and coerces him to betray Morgan.
Morgan makes it to her uncle Mordecai and talks him into helping her. Before Mordecai can give up his third of the map, Dog appears and almost kills them. They make another daring escape. Morgan is shot, but it ends up not being too bad. Shaw, who has a little medical knowledge tends to her wound. Shaw managed to pilfer Mordecai's section of the map before the escape. Morgan knows he has it, but Shaw denies it. When she catches him trying to figure out the location of Cutthroat Island on his own she imprisons him in the brig. Dog is right behind the Morning Star in his ship, The Reaper. It gets worse, as tom Scully engineers a mutiny and sets Morgan and her loyal crewmembers adrift in a storm. Luckily for them they make it to Cutthroat Island. Shaw escapes the brig and jumps overboard, joining Morgan.
Dog arrives also, and while his men sleep at night, Shaw steals Dog's third of the map. He and Morgan find the treasure but are ambushed by Dog. We discover then that Dog and Gov. Aimsley are in cahoots Aimsley offers Dog a full pardon and a privateer license for part of the treasure. Reed also arranges to have Shaw captured, after he and Morgan escape Dog's clutches.
But the feisty Morgan is a tough cookie. She sneaks aboard the Morning Star and frees her men. then she assaults the Reaper. the ships exchange cannonfire, which, to be honest would probably have sunk both of them, but this is a pirate movie....so the ships have to get close and board each other leading to a long sword fight. Morgan does some pretty impressive acrobatics and swordplay, like she's Duncan McCleod or something! She manages to free Shaw, blast a hole with gunpowder in the Reaper's hold and set it so it'll explode. The inevitable showdown occurs and she destroys Dog. As Morgan and Shaw jump overboard the Reaper explodes. But all is not lost. Morgan tied a barrel to the treasure chests...it floats to the surface so her crew can retrieve the gold! (why the treasure wasn't atomized in the explosion I don't know...maybe its gold-pressed latinum)
With her crew triumphant Morgan offers them a choice. More piracy or divvy up the treasure and go their separate ways. they of course decide to stay with her and sail the seven seas. Hmmm...what's the point in being a pirate if you're not going to get rich and retire? Whatever.
Morgan was played by Geena Davis. You know, the chick from The Fly, Earth Girls are Easy, The Accidental Tourist and The Long Kiss Good Night. I think she was okay in this movie....if Van Damme or Schwarzenegger was in this role nobody would complain about her exploits...they'd just buy it...and Davis is a tall woman and athletic. I'll cut her some slack. Dog was played by Frank Langella. Langella was (snicker) Skeletor in the live action version of the He-Man cartoon, Masters of the Universe. Shaw was actor Matthew Modine. He was in some teeny-bopper flick in the 80's calld VisionQuest, and he was also a pilot in the movie Memphis Belle.
Best Lines: "Love...who can explain it?"Dog waxes philosophically when Morgan and Shaw decide to die together rather than be captured by him.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:
1.) I'm not all up on the history of the colonies in Jamaica, but one would think that a black man dressed in finery and escorting a white woman wouldn't be too, shall we say, welcome. And lets assume that he is...wouldn't that draw a little attention? The kind of attention that Morgan doesn't need...she's wanted.
2.) Oh, BS! Its kind of cool in a ridiculous way, but the carriage scene is a bit ridiculous. you have to see it to know what I'm talking about, but when Morgan goes running through a building to jump in the moving carriage....its just kind of silly. But hey, she's a super-woman!
3.) A captain on a docked ship opens fire on Morgan's carriage as she flees the soldiers. Um...isn't that like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly? After all, the cannons destroy a few buildings, but miss Morgan. Even if they hit Morgan the collateral damage was enormous! How'd this guy get to be a captain? Didn't he figure that would happen?
4.) For god's sake, how much gunpowder was in that room? When the building Mordecai was hiding in is destroyed it goes up like it was full of dynamite. If there was so much powder in the room, why would Mordecai even hide there?
5.) During the scene when the crew run from Dog after seeing Mordecai a barrel from an exploding building hits Shaw right on the head. He's not hurt at all, which is crazy! Even if the barrel was empty it would have at least knocked him out. It should have broken his skull, probably killing him, but nope...he's not even fazed. ( Insert a Matthew Modine has a head-like-a-rock joke here) They should have edited that bit out.
6.) I hate to break up anyone's fantasies, but from what I've read, Pirates didn't usually bury their treasure. I mean some did, I'm sure, but not all of the time. If you think about it, why would they? They have to upkeep their ships and buy food and supplies...and of course pay the men. The treasure Morgan and Shaw find is incredibly huge! How'd it get there? Morgan and Shaw had to go through a big ass (and strangely well lit) cave to find it! So someone went through a lot of trouble to hide it. Of course, by hiding it, you can't spend it! I'd think a pirate that got a hold of such treasure would keep it and use it to live the good life! A life at sea isn't a bowl of cherries! One thing the movie did right was show pirates democratically deciding things....pirates did do that. They voted on who should be captain. There was an episode of The Simpsons, where Bart daydreams of finding pirate treasure. In his day dream one of the pirates asks the captain if they can use the treasure to buy things instead of buryng it...the captain shoots him and the other pirates start digging. It was funny, but c'mon...why bury it and not spend it?
NUDITY AND SEX: None
HUH?: Why does Reed give Morgan up to the Governor? Once he leaves aboard Morgan's ship there's no real worry for him unless he goes back to Port Royal! Lets be honest...he's a writer, not a pirate, so he is kind of an innocent guy...if he leaves Port Royal, which he does, with Morgan, and doesn't go back there what's the governor gonna do? Ain't like there's an INTERPOL or something in the 17th century to track him down if he goes back to England.
Speaking of crime prevention in the 17th century, the poster of Morgan doesn't look too much like her. Its not like they can fingerprint her either. When the two soldiers recognize her at the slave market I cried foul! The drawing doesn't look enough like her to make that distinction! Add to that she could just claim to be someone else. What're they gonna do? Test her DNA? Its 1687!
Dog's ship doesn't seem to be sinking after Morgan shoots it up and blasts a hole in the hold. Yeah, they say its sinking, but it looks pretty steady to me.
I could swear that when Morgan and the others make it to Cutthroat Island, she calls Mr. Glasspoole "Black boy". Yeah, he's black, but in this movie no one has called him any kinds of names. For that matter, Morgan has the most PC crew ever to sail in a pirate ship. It seems strange that she would call Glasspoole that...especially since he is one of her strongest supporters.
Um, why name a pirate ship something like "The Morning Star". Pirates want to strike fear into their prey! I don't think other ship captains quake with fear when told that the Morning Star is bearing down on them. If I were a pirate I'd name my ship something like the "Dark Stalker"or "the Lucifer". At least that sounds scary.
THE TALLY: Hey, it wasn't the best movie, but it didn't completely suck. I'm biased because I like pirate movies, but I'm still giving it 3 devils.