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Cutthroat Island
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lionsgate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (12th September 2009). |
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The Film
 Big budget flops are among my favorite topics of conversation when talking film with my geek friends, it always astounds me at how much money is thrown at something that's clearly a bad idea from the start... the problem is no one believes it's a bad idea. Traditionally escalating budgets are usually the result of various problems that occur threatening to derail a production, whether it's buying out contracts, replacing stars, rebuilding sets, or simply massaging a giant ego, money was and still is the answer to these problems. And once a production has come so far, producers eventually reach a point of no return and continue to fund the beast until its done hoping the result is a great film and will see a return on investment. Sadly for Carolco, "Cutthroat Island" was a $115 million mistake that sunk the company into bankruptcy and holds the record for the biggest box office flop of all time (only taking in a measly $10 million during its theatrical run). The film was a last desperate dash to stay afloat. "Cutthroat Island" tells the story of Morgan Adams (Geena Davis), who goes on an adventure to recover three parts of a treasure map, accompanied by her slave, William Shaw (Matthew Modine) and the crew of her ship, The Morning Star, she sets sail for Cutthroat Island. But her quest for treasure is curbed by her menacing uncle, Douglas 'Dawg' Brown (Frank Langella) who possesses the third piece to the map, and faces mutiny, the Royal Navy and high adventure. As outlined in James Robert Parish's excellent book "Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops" there were many problems that attributed to "Cutthroat Island's" inflated budget and subsequent failure. It all began with a film company unable to manage it's own growth. Carolco blossomed in the 1980's and into the early 1990's with a string of commercial hits, but with each production they lost their way. Carolco was a success mainly for producing medium-budget spectacles with big stars, the moderate overheads were easily recouped from pre-sold distribution deals both theatrically and on home video and a healthy marketing allowed for excellent saturation and a plus sized box office return. But the movies green lit in years to come would become more ambitious and produced on a much larger scale. Eventually it all fell apart and in the early 90's Carolco had made a multi million dollar loss and "Cutthroat Island" was earmarked as the saving grace of the company and was expected to generate much more money than "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (1991) had earned for the mini-studio (at the time "T2" was the #1 grossing film of all time). The mantra was throw as much money as possible into creating the biggest, loudest action spectacle ever seen... the scale of the movie itself would be the draw card. It literally was Carolco's last stand as the property was the only thing they had to develop after having sold off other projects to various studios. A costly endeavor to cast Michael Douglas as the male lead caused further problems in the long run, as rewrites were demanded, this pushed filming further back. These rewrites cost the film company a pretty penny and in the end were not liked as Douglas feared Geena Davis' role was much bigger than his, the star was also dubious about how things would go on set as the film was to be directed by none other than Davis' fiance Renny Harlin. As a result Douglas backed out and left the production high and dry, scrambling to look for a suitable replacement. Meanwhile the budget continued to escalate as sets were being built long before a finalized script was agreed upon. Eventually after just about every A-list leading man passed on the film, the role went to Matthew Modine, which for a short period of time saved Carolco some money because he was a relatively cheap actor to hire compared to the A-list names they initially wanted. But that wouldn't do them any favors when the film was finally released. So, why was "Cutthroat Island" such a disaster, the ego-driven production was the foundation for the inevitable failure. The casting of two stars that had no business of being in this film in the first place can be seen as another, to start off with Davis, at the time, was not your conventional action-adventure star. That was a path she was interested in pursuing and this film provided that opportunity but no one managed to see that the starlet was not suited for this kind of picture but that she was entirely unbelievable in this role. Added to that, the unconventional leading man choice, Modine looked awkward most of the time and didn't exude the personality type to make the role work, to make matters worse the two leads were just a complete mismatch and lead to often painfully acted scenes with virtually no chemistry. The right casting can sometimes make or break a film and in this case it broke. To make matters worse I found myself not caring about their adventure, whether they'd find the treasure or not, frankly I just didn't care about the characters either. It's hard keeping people in their seats for the rest of the film if that's the case. It's astounding that a film company would throw such a massive amount of money on not only a risky endeavor but would choose to add yet more risk by not casting a single A-list headliner. Not all films need a big name to sell it, as evidenced by this summer's "District 9" (2009) which has become a $100+ million hit and there's not a single "star" in the film. At the end of the day it's a compelling story, good acting and directing that draws people into the theater seats, but with a film like "Cutthroat Island" which had a mediocre (at best) script it was supposed to be about the spectacle (that and it was supposed to "save" Carolco)... who's going to give a damn if the film doesn't star a name actor? That's what "tent-pole" films are all about, big action, big stars. This film had big action and production design but at the expense of a choppy script and no stars. From a strictly business perspective it's as if the executives at Carolco were backing their last chance picture no matter what instead of taking the time to developing something that would truly hit with audiences. The film is a mess, the casting is all wrong, the directing is "hacky" at best, it's as if Harlin chose to print the first take and then move on. The only positives that I got from viewing this film was the lush photography and the great locations. The production design is pretty good, but when matched against the far more superior Disney franchise "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy (2003-2007 and soon to include a fourth installment) the design can occasionally look too fabricated, granted it's an adventure film but some realism adds a whole lot to the overall production values than most would give credit for. It's no surprise that the key participants still haven't bounced back from his career stumbling block, Davis was never able to headline big pictures, Modine kept working but not as a leading man, and Harlin hasn't been given a budget this big to play with since and his output has been on a steady decline. I'd certainly not recommend this film, unless you're curious to see one of the biggest Hollywood flops of all time, then by all means... go ahead.
Video
The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been mastered using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The overall image looks a lot better than I was expecting, the restored picture is beautifully sharp and crisp, displaying the lush photography accurately with bold and rich colors, deep blacks and accurate skin tones. Adventure films such as this include picturesque locations and elaborate sets, the image captured are excellent, detail, texture and depth are all well balanced. There's a few specks here and there and a couple of shots that look a bit softer than they should, but otherwise the image is beautiful. At least this turd is a polished one...
Audio
A single English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit and much like the image is a rousing and occasionally overwhelming and complexly rich audio experience. It's got everything we've come to expect from big budget spectacle films with a rich and vibrant score, to an aggressive and immersive action element that explodes off the screen and into the 7.1 sound space with a robust bass and active sound effects. The ambient sounds add further depth to the overall mix and the dialogue is as expected clear and distortion free. There aren't any complaints here, the mix is well balanced, feels and sounds natural. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
It's not surprising that this film is scant on the extras front, they include an audio commentary, a short featurette, a teaser and theatrical trailer. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up is a feature-length audio commentary by the film's director Renny Harlin, Harlin manages to provide a rather interesting track despite my initial trepidation at exploring this extra. Much like Joel Schumacher's track on "Batman & Robin" (1997), Harlin does offer some apologies in the form of admitting to the failure of the film, the challenges and offering up some excuses as to why the runaway production ended up the way it did. I was particularly interested in his comments on the filming challenges and his approach to the film, directing process and what it takes to helm such a behemoth of a project. It's a great track for the curious and provides some additional insight into the doomed film, if anything it's the only thing of substance on the entire disc and that includes the film itself. The only featurette on the disc is simply titled "featurette" and is a making-of EPK that runs for a brief 6 minutes 8 seconds, it's a fluff piece that was produced to promote the film and includes the usual behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, there's nothing worth your time here. Rounding out the extras are the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 2 minutes 3 seconds and the film's teaser trailer which runs for 1 minute 21 seconds.
Overall
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