Cutthroat Island
Internationally famed as the film that destroyed Carolco - and reputed to be an awful stinker. Dare you venture into Cutthroat Island?
One of two biggest lies told about Cutthroat Island is of how it bankrupted Carolco, the company which produced it. The other lie is that it is a tolerable piece of cinema.
If you, like me, grew up with movies in the Eighties, then you grew up with films produced or distributed by Carolco. Founded in the 1970s by Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, it was in its earliest days merely a financer of movies produced by others. In 1982, the company took a major risk by purchasing the rights to the 1972 novel First Blood, a violent tale about a traumatised Vietnam war vet named John Rambo. Yes, that Rambo. The Stallone Rambo. First Blood was a big hit and not only launched the Rambo franchise but also positioned Carolco as a serious player.
Further hits followed. The two Rambo sequels, a whole pile of Stallone or Schwarzenegger vehicles, and other such delights as Iron Eagle II and Deep Star Six and, uh, Total Recall was Carolco? Air America? L.A. Story? The Doors? Basic Instinct! Universal Soldier! Stargate! Chaplin! Cliffhanger! Terminator 2!!!!! I mean, some of those movies were good, and without Carolco, Paul Verhoeven and Sharon Stone would have had very different careers.
All available sources point to Carolco being willing to pay top dollar to their stars. Above market rate, in fact. Big budget action nonsense was the order of the day. This is where the problems begin for Carolco. Huge budgets became the norm. Stallone got $16 million for Rambo III - and the film cost $62 million - in 1988. While they were making films, not all of those films were making money. And Carolco’s business model was based on aggressively selling distribution rights, which resulted in little of the proceeds of its hits returning to it. Somehow, Carolco posted losses of $265 million in 1991 after the huge success of Terminator 2.
In 1993 and 1994, the problems reached critical mass. Carolco cancelled work on the legendary Crusade, a Paul Verhoeven – Schwarzenegger vehicle doomed to development hell, after spending multiple millions on it. There were two movies in the works, both of which would prove to be infamous: Showgirls, the Verhoeven flick about exotic dancers, and Cutthroat Island, a pirate actioner directed by Renny Harlin. If these movies failed, Carolco was finished.
In the 1990s, Harlin was considered as safe a pair of hands as just about anyone. He’d directed Die Hard II and Cliffhanger at the start of the 1990s and had acted as producer on other movies. He got attached to Cutthroat Island, a script which had been bouncing around Hollywood for years. At one point, Disney had considered picking it up and converting it into Pirates of the Caribbean. Carolco bought the script for $1.7 million and Harlin began production.
The first thing he did was cast his new wife Geena Davis as the female lead, Morgan. Davis had had a good career up ‘til then, mostly in comedies – Beetlejuice, A League of Their Own - but also in The Fly and Thelma & Louise, so it seemed reasonable. But Harlin still needed a male star to headline the movie, and managed to attach the then 50-year-old Michael Douglas. Douglas reportedly had two conditions: that production began immediately, due to scheduling conflicts, and that he be given the meatiest role.
Harlin delivered a new version of the script to Douglas in which Davis’s character had the greater profile and Douglas quit. Production was already underway, with sets being built in Malta, and Harlin began firing the script off in the vague direction of any white male movie star with a pulse and a space in their diary, but because Harlin wanted to favour Davis and because 1990s Hollywood was still a horribly sexist place, nobody of any note was interested, except for Matthew Modine.
Cutthroat Island is set in Jamaica in 1668. Davis plays pirate captain Morgan Adams, who is hunting her uncle, pirate Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), who has kidnapped Morgan’s father, Harry. Dawg wants to take Harry’s portion of the map to find Cutthroat Island, home to a huge stash of treasure. Harry refuses to hand over his part so Dawg wounds Harry while Morgan is rescuing him. Harry dies, but not before revealing his part of the map is tattooed onto his scalp.
Now that Morgan has the first piece, she goes hunting for the second, owned by another uncle, Mordechai. She realises she needs a Latin translator so goes to Port Royal. She hears there is a suitable man due to be sold into slavery from the prison, William Shaw (Modine), and she buys him, but not before attracting the attention of the wicked Governor Ainslee and getting away in a dramatic escape sequence.
Morgan and her crew go to Spittlefield to find Mordechai. But Dawg and his merry band turn up, kill Mordechai, and Morgan escapes again in another dramatic sequence, but unaware that Shaw has stolen the third piece of the map. Morgan is shot before she can get away, but Shaw manages to save her by pretending he’s a doctor. Then they discover the map isn’t in Latin at all, just written backwards.
Dawg is hot on Morgan’s heels, so Morgan decides to sail her ship through a reef and a storm to evade him. After Shaw deciphers the map, observed by Morgan, the crew mutiny and have Morgan and her favoured crew put into a boat in the storm. Shaw also escapes his bonds and heroically dives into the stormy ocean. One of Morgan’s former crew sends Ainslee the location of Cutthroat Island by messenger pigeon.
Morgan and her hearties somehow survive the night even after their boat is wrecked on the reefs. Lo and behold, the storm deposits the survivors right next to Cutthroat Island! While exploring the island, Dawg and Morgan’s old crew both arrive. That night, somebody steals Dawg’s portion of the map. Shaw! Storm-proof Shaw with a compass in his head! Dawg’s men begin searching the island and Shaw gets stuck in quicksand, a scene in which the writers shit the bed in the most egregious way possible, before Morgan rescues him. Shaw and Morgan work out where the treasure is, find it, and lose it to Dawg who is now in cahoots with Ainslee.
Shaw and Morgan escape from Dawg, before Shaw gets recaptured. Dawg and Ainslee take the treasure from the island, but Morgan sneaks aboard her old ship, rescues the crew and reclaims the ship. They attack Dawg’s ship and there’s an extended fight which ends up with Dawg cannonballed to death and his ship exploded. But hurrah! Morgan had attached a marker buoy to the treasure before the explosion, which survived the explosion, and the heroes win!
If you recall, Carolco needed Cutthroat Island and Showgirls to be mega-hits to save the company. Showgirls…well, it made its money back on video rentals and achieved cult status. Cutthroat Island had a budget of around $100 million and took $16 million. Worldwide. But by the time Cutthroat Island was released in December 1995, Carolco had already seen the writing on the wall and declared bankruptcy. Cutthroat Island didn’t kill Carolco, but it was the final nail in the coffin, and Carolco knew it. They had the film in the can, watched it, shrugged and effectively said “Well, fuck.”
Let me be clear – this is a heinously bad movie.
Like many heinously bad movies, it’s not the fault of the vast majority of people who worked on it. Much of the budget is visible on screen. The sets are mostly great, the cinematography lovely. Some of the stunt work is excellent, when left to the stuntmen, but Harlin insisted on having the stars do their own stunts, with mixed results. The fight scenes are uninspired and passable. The production had two ships built, for a million bucks each, for the movie. Then, at the climax, the pyro team blew one ship – or a very fine model of it – into literal smithereens in one of the best explosions I’ve seen on screen.
Yet this is still a shit movie. Blame falls squarely on two aspects: the script, and the leads.
I’m not blaming Frank Langella for any of it. Dawg is a delightfully villainous rogue thanks to Langella. Where there is murder to be done, he kills. Where there is betrayal, he revels in it. Where there is scenery to be chewed and tarantulas to be crushed, Langella commits and has a great time. No, he’s fine, as are much of the supporting cast.
Modine is miscast or misdirected and probably both. As Morgan’s love interest, a relationship which is totally implausible through a lack of story logic and even less chemistry between Davis and Modine, Shaw may as well not be in the movie. Modine might have the action chops to fence well, but he doesn’t have the acting chops to pull off being a lovable rogue. Lord love him, he tries. It doesn’t matter. Shaw, as a character, is crippled by being written as perhaps the most idiotic man in the Caribbean. Any pretence of him coming off as clever is shattered when he claims to be a doctor and ‘performs’ surgery – and a remarkably bloodless surgery at that – to extract a bullet after Morgan is shot. It is further harmed when he escapes the mutineers by jumping off a ship at night in a storm and somehow not only survives, but swims to the island. Worse is yet to come when he’s trapped in quicksand. He has the final third of the map. If he gets pulled under, Morgan will never find the treasure. But this obvious statement eludes him because it eluded the writers and they finish the scene in a ham-fisted manner.
Oh, those writers. Cutthroat Island has six of them credited. Two screenplay, four story. An unwritten rule of movie quality could be summarised as “the more the writers credited, the worse it is”. The story, in structure and concept, is utterly conventional. There are no killer moments or remarkable twists. The script could have fallen into a time warp to the 1950s and it would be at home. The humour is perfunctory at best and the dialogue – well, there is dialogue. None of it is memorable. Just as none of the characters are memorable.
I would go so far as to say this film doesn’t actually have characters. This is a writing flaw which keeps on popping up and I’m going to keep on being all reductive about it. It is unforgivable for a story which had over 3 million dollars spent on it, including a million from Harlin’s own pocket, to have such shitty characterization. Remember, at the most basic level, all characters have a ‘want’. But this makes them mere plot functionaries. Stronger characters have a ‘need’ or a ‘flaw’ which the story exposes and explores, something in opposition to the goal. Let’s apply this to the three leads: Dawg has a want. He wants the treasure. He’s the antagonist, so OK. It’s just about enough. Shaw…hm. Shaw wants money. Shaw doesn’t have a need. This is worrying. And Morgan. Morgan wants…the treasure too, mostly out of revenge. Her need? Fucked if I know. The story has plot but it doesn’t actually have any story. There’s no opportunity here for character development. No themes to unpack. No chance for growth or reflection. Nothing human.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Geena Davis’s performance. In a film with galleons prominent, the most wooden thing in view is Davis. Her line readings are devoid of emotion or nuance. They are delivered with all the passion of someone taking your order over the phone at the pizzeria. Remember, this is a part written for her under the supervision of her husband, who was directing her, and nobody looked at the rushes and said, “she’s not even phoning it in, is she?” I don’t mind that Davis can’t really carry the stunt load, because she is trying. I mind that as the lead, she stinks. She does not convince as a cunning and ambitious pirate captain.
I cannot explain why Harlin and Davis screwed up so bad. In 1996, they released another film together, The Long Kiss Goodnight, which I recall enjoying because of its action, and script from Shane Black - a Shane Black script is almost always a good time - and it has Samuel L Jackson in it. This film also makes demands of Davis in her acting and stuntwork and she is convincing. Given that Davis won an Oscar in the late 1980s, her inability to portray Morgan in a remotely competent manner is bewildering. Except…
Among the sources I consulted for this review is a Variety piece excerpting a 2024 book, Box Office Poison, by Tim Robey. It contains one huge bombshell – both Harlin and Davis wanted out from the production. Davis was terrified of the role and it shows. Harlin said in 2011 that he knew it was suicide to make a pirate movie with a female lead. The result of having a director and star who believed what they were doing was a folly is visible on screen. No wonder critics hated it and audiences stayed away.
I’m glad Cutthroat Island didn’t sink any one person’s career. Harlin and Davis made The Long Kiss Goodnight the following year. Davis has made other films and Harlin has released 17 films as director since. Matthew Modine’s career hasn’t been idle either, but neither he nor Davis have been trusted as a big-budget headliner since.
I’m not remotely surprised Cutthroat Island failed at the box office. Horribly expensive, terribly written, appallingly cast. It can’t even manage to be ‘so bad it’s good’. It’s just bad. Bad, bad, bad. Leave it alone, don’t bother with it. My God, I hated it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-vanity-that-led-to-a-100m-bonfire-1304053.html
https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-rise-and-fall-of-carolco/
