Cutthroat Island (1995) Movie Review

Cutthroat Island is a 1995 action adventure swashbuckling film directed by Renny Harlin and written by Robert King and Marc Norman. The film stars Renny's wife at the time, Geena Davis, and was considered to be some sort of vanity project because of this. It also features Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin, Patrick Malahide and Stan Shaw in the cast. Originally pitched to Disney's CEO Michael Eisner, who considered making it a Pirates of the Caribbean film, only to be turned down, writers James Gorman and Michael Frost Beckner went to independent production company Carolco Pictures which greenlit the film. Harlin was hired to direct and the movie changed into a pirate adventure featuring a female protagonist, the budget was increased to somewhere around 92 or 115 million dollars. Once released, the film was a huge box office bomb, only making 16 million dollars back, this pretty much damaged the career of the people involved and gave the film a bad reputation.

Set in 1668, the film follows dreaded captain Morgan Adams as a female pirate leading her men to Cutthroat Island, but she needs someone who can read Latin, so they rescue enslaved thief William Shaw, who claims to be fluent in the language. What follows is a series of obstacles, usually set by Morgan's nefarious uncle and the British forces, that keep our heroes from getting the valuable treasure hidden in the infamous Island.

Far from the awful mess it's reputation might lead you to be believe it is, Cutthroat Island is a well-oiled machine that nowadays comes off as fresh, well crafted, exciting and potent because of its dazzling spectacle that relies heavily on great sets and impactful practical effects and real stunts that are wonderfully captured by real film cameras, as in stark celluloid. All of these elements kind of set it apart from the usual muck that gets distributed to theaters or the type of movie-making format that arrives directly at streaming services. While people at the time might have been somewhat resistant to the charms of an expensive production that could only deliver light fun, it seems like it was ahead of its time since films like Pirates of the Caribbean would come later on and become hits with audiences.

While the character writing is not particularly thoughtful, we do have some nice interactions and a great chemistry between the cast members. The tone is well balanced all around with some funny touches on top of the dynamic action. Directing-wise I gotta say that Harlin can pull off some really intricate set-pieces, and this film has an abundance of them, but he is sort of lost when it comes to the more normal sequences and his work can come off as pedestrian there, even when aided by cinematographer Peter Levy. The sets and production design do the heavy lifting and help the film visually.

I do like how we see the usual day-to-day proceedings of Morgan's pirate crew and how the fact that she is a female pirate, while being strange to some, isn't really a problem for a lot of the other characters in order to modernize the film to a degree. Davis is very active throughout the film, both as a character driving the story forwards and physically engaged in several battles. Morgan has her moments of glory and the movie never really gazes at her in sleazy ways just for the sake of it, so it's not just eye-candy for male audiences.

I do recommend this unrelenting roller coaster to anyone interested in the film both because of its mark in recent film history and because of its most obvious virtues that were underrated at the time. It kind of deserves a second look. Give it another chance, especially if you enjoyed stuff like The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), another Harlin-Davis collab.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) Movie Review

Geena Davis and Renny Harlin were married, so he put her in his movies. The first one was Cutthroat Island from 1995, which was a bomb. The second film he made with her was an action thriller titled The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), which co-starred Samuel L. Jackson. Unlike Harlin's previous film, this one featured a strong script by Shane Black.

While everything seemed promising, the film ended up underperforming at the box office. Some people think the bad taste Cutthroat Island (an even bigger bomb) left on the audience was another factor as to why Long Kiss performed rather underwhelmingly. However, it gained an audience over the years and now has a cult following.

Samantha Caine (Geena Davis), a woman with amnesia, gets her life changed when she hires a private investigator (Samuel L. Jackson) in order to find out about her own past. This uncovers and brings out of the shadows her former rivals and puts her life, and her family's, in severe danger. However, Samantha slowly regains past abilities she had forgotten about that will allow her to fight for her loved ones and discover all she had wiped from her memory.

Long Kiss is a highly entertaining flick that delivers the goods and manages to engage you with it's likable characters, strong writing and constant stimulation through action. It features the witty dialogue that you would expect from Shane Black, sometimes with very unnatural results. You will also find some very quirky and slightly comedic sequences that might feel a bit odd, like when Samantha discovers some of her assassin training while cooking, which isnt a bad moment, it's actually sort of inventive.

I will say that it's more than just action, it stablishes and develops quite efficiently the conflicts and dramatic weight of the story. As with many Shane Black movies, and most of Renny Harlin movies, there are a lot of exagerated elements along with some somewhat low key ones. There's always a clash in styles. Sometimes you are watching a scene that might fit among the first two Lethal Weapon movies, and the next one you are watching a heavily stylized scene that increases it's unreality (the hallucinations, the cartoonish villains). Its a bit jarring but it also keeps things interesting.

In that vein, the action itself seems perfectly grounded in paper, but when you see it executed you see people flying around and stuff blowing up in people's faces without any real consequences. If you were to simply laid out a description of the action scenes then it makes perfect sense but Harlin wanted to turn it into something greatly exagerated and almost ridiculous. Its like Nikita (1990) by the way of Stephen Chow (maybe not THAT crazy but close to it).

Samantha is a main character that surprises you, especially at the beginning. The script gives you left turns and reveals things that you might not be expecting, from contradicting a superfitial characterization to humorous surprises just for comedy sake and Samantha a part of that, but it sort of gets turned into a very normal "assassin with no memory ofher past living a normal life now" type of premise. Could have been worse, I will say this is certainly among the top examples of such plots. She struggles constantly between her motherly sweetness and deadly killer instincts, a good conflict for her character to face against, which ends up wrapping up very nicely during the climax.

Speaking of the climax, that's a huge highlight, very reminiscent of the first two Die Hard movies but compacted into just one explosive (literally) sequence. Again, it's yet another Harlinesque spectacle that has very little realism when it comes the explosions and some physics but makes it up with very solidly constructed sequences, shot by shot, it's all perfectly timed and directed.

Completely recommended for anyone with any type of appreciation for action movies and who really enjoy smart and well made action blockbusters. I kind of get the sense that Renny Harlin is probably an unsung hero of the 90's era of female action cinema, between this and Cutthroat Island, he gave us two mainstream efforts.