Dead Pirate Joke

Director Michael Ritchie's 1980 movie version of Peter Benchley's novel The Island is based on a very simple premise: if the average person were to come across the real-life equivalent of the pirates celebrated in old Hollywood movies, the chances are that they would not care too much for the experience. Indeed, anyone who seriously disagrees with this premise need only compare the average American moviegoer's reaction to the latest news about the Somali pirates -- which is generally "keelhaul the bastards and hang the survivors from the highest masthead!" -- to the more benign reaction the same moviegoer would have to a fictional pirate like the ones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies -- which is basically "Hey, look! It's one of our guys!"

Of course, one might argue that such a reaction is only human nature. It is always easy to glamorize the outlaws of one's own ancestors since one rarely has to pick up after any of the real-life messes said outlaws left behind. And it is not necessarily xenophobic to fear pirates in the here and now. After all, it is not like the worst deeds of the Somali pirates were made up by some bored PR agent, and it is certainly not America's fault that the British pirates of yesteryear are no longer around to compare against this new breed of maritime scoundrel.

That said, it is kinda ironic to compare Ritchie's modern-day pirate movie -- which, despite being as dark and violent as any 1980 pirate movie could be, still bombed out at the box office -- to the more recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies -- which managed to be somewhat more successful despite having a considerable amount of darkness and violence themselves. Then again, almost all the darkness and violence in those Pirates of the Caribbean movies were outsourced to supernatural villains so maybe that is where Ritchie went wrong -- he made the mistake of confining all his movie's evil deeds to mere mortals.

In any event, the pirates in The Island were presented as being just another lost tribe that just happened to make it to the twentieth century without losing too many of their bloodthirsty traditions. They had absorbed something of modern life thanks to a mysterious collaborator but basically they were still just as cruel as their ancestors had been centuries earlier. More importantly, the pirates and their women had grown so sterile due to years of inbreeding that in order to increase their numbers, they had to kidnap the children of their victims and raise them as their own.

At this point entered intrepid journalist Michael Caine and his estranged son. Caine was investigating a Caribbean mystery involving missing people and his son -- due to a complicated custody agreement -- just happened to be along for the ride. Paths crossed, the journalist met the pirates and things did not go so well for the twentieth-century guys. Some humor ensued but most of it was pitch-black and this being a summer release, no opportunity for sadistic violence was overlooked.

Anyone expecting some of the charm and wit of the old Errol Flynn movies is hereby notified to sail in a different direction. Pirate movies in the 1980s rarely did wit and it certainly did not help that this particular movie concluded with one of the most gratuitously violent movie climaxes of the 1980s.

So is the film worth seeing today? Not really though I must confess that I cannot help wondering what a more clever film maker could do with such a premise today. It certainly could not be any worse than having to listen to yet another quip about how pirates were yesteryear's rock stars though I must admit that every time I hear a line to that effect, I cannot help but wonder how long Sid Vicious would have lasted on the high seas.