22 September 2023

Review: Cutthroat Island 4K UHD

4K UHD & Blu-ray: Cutthroat Island (1995)

A wise cracking, rum swigging pirate on the run from British military and in search of hidden treasure…no, this ISN’T another tale about Captain Jack Sparrow and predates the Pirates of the Caribbean movies by 8 years…but was far less successful at the cinema box office.

Geena Davis is Morgan Adams, the daughter of 1 pirate and niece to 2 others, whom after peeling of her father’s scalp (you’ll have to watch to find out why), begins a swashbuckling adventure to piece together parts of a secret map to find the location of hidden treasure along with her (mostly) loyal crew.

Trying to beat her to the treasure is her Uncle Dawg (Frank Langella) and his crew of ne’er-do-well’s.

So begins a race to find the fortune, which includes King Charles the monkey, a double crossing thief (Matthew Modine), lots of sword fights, chases and explosions.

Cutthroat Island was a huge box office bust upon its release, with a budget in and around $100M and its US gross a measly $10M, confining it to disappear onto VHS and eventually find its audience there…which is where I 1st watched (and enjoyed) it.

While I do still find it a little overlong, especially in some of the drawn out battles/fights, I also still enjoy it a hell of a lot too, this Studio Canal 4K UHD making it look and sound great…Tina watched it with me and at one point turned her head around as she thought a monkey had appeared behind her…testament to a good surround sound track.

Both Modine and Langella are good in their respective roles, though I always feel that their characters could have been that much better with different casting. Geena Davis however is superb, throwing herself (quite literally at times) into the part with gusto and entirely believable as a female pirate not to cross paths with.

The action scenes benefit from being practical rather than cgi, with huge explosions rocking the scenery…was that barrel flying through the air really meant to hit Matthew Modine on the head? Though as mentioned before, some of these scenes can be a little lengthy and outstay their welcome.

With emphasis on a rollicking witty adventure, this is perfect family viewing…though I can imagine a lot of kids saying “it’s not as good as a Jack Sparrow movie“, and while I would agree with them a little, I didn’t bother watching the last “pirates” movie and have no real intention of rewatching the others either. This however was a very enjoyable rewatch and one which I’d happily put on again, especially this Studiocanal 4K UHD.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

On DVD