Pirates (1986)
Directed by Roman Polanski

Film Review

It was immediately after his acclaimed Chinatown (1974) that Roman Polanski set about fulfilling a long-held personal ambition, to make a full-blown  swashbuckling adventure film, in the mould of such earlier classics of the genre as Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940).  Jack Nicholson, the star of Chinatown, was the director's original choice for the lead part, the decrepit  and generally disgusting pirate Captain Red, but the actor's demands for an exorbitant fee was one of the factors that delayed the project for several years.  It was only after a seven year break from filmmaking in the 1980s, during which Polanski directed and starred in a stage production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, that the director was finally able to put his swashubuckler Pirates into production, with the backing of Tunisian film producer Tarak Ben Ammar.

The part that was originally conceived for Jack Nicholson was ultimately conferred on Walter Matthau, a bizarre choice that contributed to the film's poor reception by critics and audiences.  Let down by a script which fails to put flesh on the bones of any of the characters in the film, Matthau muddles his through this fiasco as best he can (looking unsure whether it is a genuine swashbuckler or just a silly send-up), but for the most part he appears lost at sea (the opening sequence being an apt visual metaphor for what ensues).  The eccentric casting aside, Pirates suffers from a dismal lack of narrative structure and essentially boils down to a succession of standalone set-pieces which fail to gel into a coherent whole.  It's like a compendium of pirate movie 'best bits', none of it adding up to much, even if the film is directed with Polanki's customary gusto and meticulous precision.  The film is just about saved by its dramatic visuals, the star of the show being an authentic mock-up of a 17th century galleon, but without a coherent story the film drifts pretty aimlessly.  It is left to composer Philippe Sarde to pull the whole thing together as best he can with a score which, ironically, is one of his finest.

Pirates is not only Roman Polanski's least successful film from an artistic point of view, it was also his biggest commercial failure.  The film was originally allotted a budget of 15 million dollars but ended up costing around 40 millions.  The film struggled to take much more that seven million dollars at the box office worldwide, and it caused Polanski further grief when, in 2010, one of his actors, Charlotte Lewis, accused him of sexual misconduct.  Although the director swiftly won back the critics with his next film, Frantic (1988), this proved to be another commercial setback.  The spectacular flop that was Pirates pretty well killed off the swashbuckler genre for several years, although it made a spectacular return from the dead in 2003 with The Curse of the Black Pearl, the first in the phenomenally successful series of Pirates of the Caribbean films.  Now if only Roman Polanski had had the foresight to cast Johnny Depp in the role of Captain Red things might have been different...

Film Synopsis

On a sea infested with sharks there drifts a raft carrying two half-starved wretches: the famous pirate Captain Red and his young second-in-command, La Grenouille.  Spotting a Spanish galleon, they climb aboard and discover that it is carrying two treasures - a golden Aztec throne and the beautiful young niece of the governor of Maracaibo, Dolorès.  With the captain on his deathbed, his lieutenant, Don Alfonso Felipe, has taken over the running of the crew with an iron hand. Having thwarted a mutiny, Captain Red takes control of the vessel...