ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 22, 1995 TAG: 9512250022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: JOHN HARTL SEATTLE TIMES
Michael Douglas bailed out of this $65-million pirate movie in order to make ``The American President.'' Smart career move.
Still, casting is hardly the essential issue here. Even with the 1990s equivalent of Erroll Flynn, ``CutThroat Island'' would be a debacle. Director Renny Harlin (``Die Hard 2'') and his writers, Robert King (``Speechless'') and Marc Norman (``Zandy's Bride''), appear to have spent many hours watching bad pirate movies, and they seem determined to repeat every pieces-of-eight cliche.
Matthew Modine plays the indentured servant of a pirate's daughter (Geena Davis), who needs him to decipher a treasure map left to her by her father (Harris Yulin), whose brother (Frank Langella) murdered him. They meet at a slave auction, then race off to an obscure island to beat her uncle to the loot.
The result is a suspenseless rehash of ``Treasure Island'' that vainly tries to transform both Modine and Davis (the director's wife) into marketable action-movie stars. Mostly they specialize in forced displays of sparkling dentures and gauche repartee. There's no reason to care whether they or Langella's party discover the treasure first.
``I'm basically a shallow man,'' says Modine at one point, and you believe him all too readily. Even when he performs impromptu surgery on Davis, in a scene that recalls Sylvester Stallone's outrageous self-cauterizing technique in ``Rambo III,'' the scene is so ludicrously staged that it undermines the potential heroism of either character.
In the role of the smart-aleck villain, Langella casually slashes throats, shoots people for claiming to be hungry (``We need less mouths''), crushes tarantulas with his bare hand, and kisses off Modine and Davis when they appear to have plunged to their deaths together (``Love, who can explain it?'').
It seems like surefire casting, but there's something off about Langella's performance. He's better at playing suave bad guys like the White House chief of staff in ``Dave.'' This guy's so obvious that Langella seems to be registering distaste at his one-liners. Even harder to digest is the relentless comic relief supplied by cutaway shots to a cute monkey.
MGM's millions did buy a good-looking film. Peter Levy's cinematography is effective in both the panoramic shots and the more intimate scenes, and the vertigo-inducing rope stunts recall the tenser scenes in Harlin's ``Cliffhanger.'' But much of the action is awkwardly staged, and Harlin's use of slow motion merely calls attention to it.
As a commercial miscalculation, ``CutThroat Island'' eclipses even Roman Polanksi's dire ``Pirates'' and James Goldstone's inane ``Swashbuckler'' - neither of which cost this much to produce.
Cutthroat Island H* A United Artists release playing at the Tanglewood Mall Theatre. 123 min. Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual situations and salty language.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB