Review – Cutthroat Island

I have to admit that I’d seen this before – many years ago – and thus knew what I was getting before I started. My intent was to deliberately change the TV channel to a program bad enough to drive me from the room and supply a little annoying, motivational background noise while I washed some dishes. For that purpose it was particularly well suited. Actually watching it, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. This picture exists primarily to allow Geena Davis and then-husband-and-alleged-director Renny Harlin to work together. Thus it struck me as particularly odd that Harlin manages to film his wife from all her worst angles and consistently use the takes in which she does the flattest job of delivering her lines (though in his defense, for all I know that could have been all the takes). And for some reason Matthew Modine squanders his I-worked-with-Stanley-Kubrick cred on this crud, the actor’s equivalent of training as a cordon bleu chef and then getting a job at Burger King. Even Frank Langella is worse than usual. Overall this is the biggest catastrophe of a pirate movie I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. Wish I’d skipped it