Fantastic!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Pirate's daughter Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) teams up with light-fingered rapscallion Shaw (Matthew Modine) to locate a hidden fortune in gold and jewels. Also searching for the treasure is Morgan's wicked uncle Dawg (Frank Langella), who will stop at nothing to lay his hands on the loot.Yarrr! This be the film that scuppered Carolco, a big-budget, swashbuckling adventure on the high-seas that was keelhauled by the critics and which almost left star Geena Davis' acting career swinging from the yard arm. But to be fair, it's reputation as a scurvy dog of a movie isn't really deserved. Sure, Davis might not be everyone's idea of a tough sea-faring wench, and aye, the plot is as stale as a barrel of month old ship's biscuits, but in terms of spectacle it doesn't disappoint.At the helm is Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger), who steers a steady course through well-charted waters, his film providing the viewer with tried and tested piratical content: swordfights, battles, scenic islands, a ship in a storm, treacherous sea-dogs, and a hidden treasure. It's been done many times before (and since, with the Pirates of the Caribbean series), but Harlin makes the most of the many doubloons coughed up by Carolco, with some breathtaking production design, wonderful cinematography, truly amazing stunts and plenty of explosive action (including the destruction of an entire pirate ship).At the end of the day, Cutthroat Island doesn't do anything radical with the genre, but it does provide the viewer with a couple of hours of entertaining escapism. And that, me hearties, is good enough for this old landlubber.

There's something about "Cutthroat Island" that makes it enjoyable in spite of its shortcomings (miscast Geena Davis, sometimes questionable direction, sour reputation for bankrupting its studio). Mainly, this is a pretty kickass pirate movie with good action and an unflagging sense of adventure. Most of this is due to the magnificent score - which is probably the magical ingredient that keeps this vessel afloat.Honestly, this would probably be dead in the water without Debney's score (bad puns on the house), but I enjoyed myself a lot more than expected.7/10

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

It was love at first sight, I like everything in this film.... the action is great and non stop, the settings is awesome, the ships are beautiful and the final battle and explosions is 'Die hard' worth. Even the love story never becomes schmalzy because the whole film is permeated by good sense of humour. It's a pity that it was a flop when it came out, perhaps it was too ahead of it's time with a female pirate doing all the action on her own. I read another comment saying that everything is amazing but there is "too much action" and strangely it is the same comment I heard about Salt with Angelina Jolie (another of my favourites). I don't understand... a number of franchises built their fortune on non-stop action - Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Bourne Trilogy to name the top ones - and this is a pirate movie for god sake, but there is "too much action"....