Quoth the Harlin: “I’m the last person to care about authenticity.”

That would be Renny Harlin, director of 1995’s pirate movie revival CUTTHROAT ISLAND, defending himself against allegations that he’d been blowing the budget on meticulously recreating period clothing down to the shoelace.

CUTTHROAT ISLAND is generally credited with sinking Carolco Pictures, a production company widely known for profligate overspending in the making of massive blockbuster action films of the 80s and 90s. TERMINATOR 2, TOTAL RECALL, BASIC INSTINCT, and the first three RAMBO films just to name some of the major highlights. Greenlit at $65 million but coming in at a reported $115 million, it was the nail in the coffin for the near-bankrupt Carolco and, according to some guy on Wikipedia, “significantly reduc[ed] the bankability of…pirate themed films,” which makes it sound like they were some kind of hot property pre-PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN (a franchise that still has pretty much a movie monopoly on pirates). 

Nothing cements a film’s public reputation as garbage quite so concretely as shitty box-office, which is why so many notorious flops tend to be prime candidates for future reassessment. Nobody saw CUTTHROAT ISLAND in 1995, making it all too easy for some idiot, 15-plus years later, to claim that it’s actually pretty good.

But that idiot would be mostly wrong.

CUTTHROAT ISLAND may be far from calamitously awful, but it certainly is bloated, overlong and dull. Packed with miscast actors and saddled with an aimless, expository script, it offers little but empty spectacle (which I admit it delivers, albeit perfunctorily).

A brief summary: Lady Pirate Captain Morgan Adams (Geena Davis, dating but not yet married to Harlin) vows to avenge the death of her father at the hands of her evil uncle Dawg (Frank Langella) and beat him to the buried treasure on the titular island. Trouble is, the map she needs to find it is split into three parts, one in Dawg’s possession. Needing someone to translate the map, written in Latin, she purchases an “educated” slave (with hidden plans of his own), William Shaw (Matthew Modine), and sets off to get filthy rich and have her revenge.

Pretty straightforward.

In fact, the skeleton of the plot is remarkably similar to that of the aforementioned first PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN film; vengeful, orphaned protagonist seeks vengeance and hidden riches while being pursued by the bad guys who wronged him. There’s a lot of fun to be had in comparing the two films, especially given their remarkably dissimilar public reception. Certainly there are major differences, specifically the Jack Sparrow character (America’s favorite narratively extraneous hero) and, more importantly, the supernatural elements of that franchise. 

Now in both CUTTHROAT and PIRATES, the threadbare narrative is just a clothesline to hang a few setpieces on. Go to this place, secure this object, have a swordfight, repeat. That would be acceptable if the bulk of the action sequences were actually exciting, but this is where the usually reliable Harlin fails. The fights are sluggish and rehearsed. I’m certain that real cutlasses were heavy enough to be useless without practice, but here you can almost feel the actors counting out the choreography in their heads. “One, two, parry, step.” Even Modine, supposedly and experienced fencer, is adrift. 

What’s more, PIRATES greatly benefits from that vaunted Jerry Bruckheimer sheen. Granted, effects technology and an extra hundred million bucks or so can do a lot for any production, but CUTTHROAT resembles nothing so much as one of those muddy, workmanlike Salkind productions* like CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY. One pines for the anarchic physicality of Richard Lester’s swashbuckling MUSKETEERS films, not to mention his eye for casting.

Which brings me to another major contributor to CUTTHROAT ISLAND’s failure: the cast. Harlin was convinced that this film would make his ladyfriend Davis an action heroine, but here she’s completely unable to shake off her roots as a film comedienne, flopping around like a gangly muppet and delivering buccaneer’s threats like the drive-thru attendant asking you if you want to super size that. Here’s a particular favorite bit of mealy-mouthed nonsense: “Because I am so charitable, I will maroon you on a rock the size of this table, instead of splattering your brains across my bulkhead…as you deserve.” Now imagine that read to you by a high-school freshman drama student from Massachusetts. There you go.

Frankly it’s surprising that Davis seems so completely incapable and non-threatening given her work in Harlin’s next picture, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, in which she starred as a government assassin. Although that film boasted a much better script by Shane Black.

Modine doesn’t fare much better. He seems to have been chosen for his occasional resemblance (especially when mustachioed) to Errol Flynn (his films being an obvious touchstone here). But he’s more rodent-like than anything, putting on a crummy, erratic British accent. He’d pass for Flynn maybe at a Halloween party, or in a made-for-TV biopic of Olivia De Havilland. His physical presence is marginalized even further by Harlin’s insistence on making his character the brains of the outfit, leaving him to spout stupid lines like “I wish I’d never learned Latin” while everybody else gets to, you know, actually do stuff.

That these two rag dolls are pointlessly forced by the screenplay to engage in a couple of cutesy love scenes is an avenue best left unexplored, except to say that Roger Moore’s oft-nauseating woo-pitching in his Bond entries is slightly more watchable.

Only villain Frank Langella seems to realize what movie he’s in, chewing up the scenery and seeming genuinely psychotic as the ruthless but moronically named Uncle Dawg. He does a lot of yelling and stomping around and random keelhauling of his own crew to make the part memorable. But despite being the villain of the piece, Langella receives maybe 20 minutes of screen time total. It’s as if the film is afraid to really cut loose and give us the violent spectacle it keeps promising.

In fact, CUTTHROAT ISLAND would have benefited nicely from Harlin’s marked glee in often tastelessly graphic violence. His “best” films absolutely revel in bloodshed, yet there’s nothing here as lovingly nasty as the infamous icicle eye-gouge in DIE HARD 2 or as sickly thrilling as (my personal favorite) the stalactite bench-press impalement in CLIFFHANGER.

All of this snowballs together to paint a picture of a film that’s almost aggressively second-rate. Where did that $115 million go? It’s certainly not up on the screen. Reportedly, last minute rewrites, the eleventh-hour dropout of Michael Douglas (who had a huge pay-or-play deal for Modine’s role), and the rebuilding of most of the sets contributed to the mounting budget. And yet in a few cases the film’s sloppy, cheap vibe seems almost pleasantly quaint. Set walls wobble when collided with. Exteriors aren’t expanded with CGI or teeming with extras (real or digital). The blue skies aren’t laden with ominous storm clouds or phony computer-generated sunsets. One of the best things about mid-90’s action films like this, whether they work or not, is that they are some of the last examples of huge-budget spectacle done practically, with a relative minimum of then-still-new digital technology. It’s nice to see real stunts with stuntment, real boats on real water getting blown to shreds with real explosives. I miss those days.

I was lucky enough to get a White Elephant assignment that was given a very fine Blu-Ray release; I imagine that most other entries won’t come with that luxury. But the HD transfer uncovers as much as it makes up for. For every nicely framed shot or dynamic bit of movement, there’s an obvious painted backdrop or crummy blue-screen composite. But I only mention such things because they are a pet obsession of mine

CUTTHROAT ISLAND is a film that, were it made today, would probably be viewed as an empty knockoff of a successful franchise. Frankly it’s surprising that PIRATES is still the only peglegged game in town, given its success. CUTTHROAT’s hardly due for rediscovery or something akin to the truly weird and inventive but stupid LAST ACTION HERO, but nor is it the unmitigated disaster history has labelled it. It’s mostly just forgettably mediocre, and in that way its legacy has noticeably outlasted its reputation. It has much more in common with the bloated, expensive, turgid epics cranked out by the studios like clockwork to this day. PRINCE OF PERSIA, CLASH OF THE TITANS or THE A-TEAM aren’t entirely dissimilar.

One last thing: Carolco greenlit this monster after balking at the ever-increasing budget for Paul Verhoeven’s CRUSADE, which sadly was never filmed. Verhoeven moved on to his own (also never launched) pirate film MISTRESS OF THE SEAS, which Geena Davis wanted to star in instead of CUTTHROAT, to which she was unfortunately contractually obligated. MISTRESS sounds like something close to Verhoeven’s FLESH + BLOOD, but with pirates, which leads me to imagine a film that’s better and wilder and meatier than just about any other that I’ve referenced in this post. 

* I briefly considered using the phrase “That Salkind Feeling” but decided against it. You’re welcome.