Cutthroat Island (Lionsgate DVD-Video)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C-
Lionsgate
has a new version of Renny Harlin’s epic bomb Cutthroat Island (1995) that helped to kill the underrated Carolco
production company and did not help MGM at the time either. Unfortunately, this Geena Davis/Matthew
Modine adventure is a recycle of the now ancient letterboxed first-issue DVD
from about ten years ago and except for being more mature than the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy, is
still bad.
It has a
cult following too, but the Robert King/Marc Norman script is obnoxious in its
own way. One thing that is better 12
years later are all the sets the money bought versus tiered digital effects. Unfortunately, that changes little else and
is a curio at best as Davis is the pirate and Frank Langella is the villain. Lionsgate wanted to have this out in hopes Pirates Of The Caribbean who have never
seen it might add to the cult. I say
skip it.
The film
was shot in two anamorphic 35mm 2.35 X 1 scope formats: Panavision and
Technovision, the latter an Italian format that has a good look. Too bad you cannot see that here in the work
of cinematographer Peter Levy’s (A.C.S.) work as Director Of Photography. Though this has a great DTS mix and was issued
as such elsewhere, the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix here is compressed and weak. John Denbey’s score cannot save the film
either. Extras are lame to with text
production notes, text cast/crew bios and both the theatrical teaser and
trailer. Hope the Blu-ray is enough of
an upgrade to get a good second look at what did work.
- Nicholas Sheffo
