Pirates (1986 film)

The Atlantic Ocean, the year 1659. The infamous English pirate Thomas Bartholomew Red (Walter Matthau), known as Captain Red, and his ship's teenage cabin boy Jean-Baptiste (Cris Campion), nicknamed "Frog", are lost on a raft without supplies in the ocean. Luckily, Captain Red and Frog are picked up by Neptune, a Spanish galleon en route to Spain. Thrown into the brig, Red and Frog meet the ship's cook Boomako (Olu Jacobs), imprisoned after being accused of poisoning the Neptune's captain Linares (Ferdy Mayne) in a supposed attempt at stealing the golden throne, loot from the Aztec King Capatec Anahuac, that is being secretly transported in the galleon's hold. Captain Red becomes obsessed with capturing the throne for himself. Meanwhile, Frog falls in love with Maria-Dolores (Charlotte Lewis), the niece of Maracaibo's governor, who is travelling on the Neptune as a passenger.

Captain Linares dies and the command of the ship is taken over by his ruthless and ambitious first mate, lieutenant Don Alfonso de la Torré (Damien Thomas) who is also in love with Maria-Dolores, though she does not reciprocate his feelings. Red and Frog, put to work along with Neptune's crew, make an attempt at instigating a mutiny. In response, Don Alfonso has them sentenced to death along with a few other mutineers. However, Captain Red devises a plan that allows them to avoid execution and use the ensuing confusion to launch an open rebellion, which proves successful when most of the crew members rally against their masters. After the battle, Frog gains Maria-Dolores' interest when he saves her from an attempted rape, killing one of his fellow mutineers in the process.

Putting himself in command of the Neptune, Captain Red directs the ship to a pirate cove, led by Dutch (Roy Kinnear), a merchant and old associate of Red. Meeting his former crewmates, Captain Red throws a party and imprisons Don Alfonso and his officers. However, one of Dutch's hostages releases them while the pirates are partying. Don Alfonso and his men return to the Neptune and retake the ship, sailing away with the golden throne in the morning. Using the money he has gained from Dutch, Captain Red purchases an old brig and pursues the Neptune to Maracaibo.

At night, Captain Red, Frog, and Boomako sneak into the governor's residence with Maria-Dolores as their hostage. Red plans to use her as a bargaining chip and force her wealthy uncle to exchange her for the golden throne. Although the governor proves to be unsympathetic for his niece's fate, he becomes more cooperative after Captain Red tortures him instead, finding out that he is suffering from podagra. As Red demands, the governor provides him with a document that entitles him to confiscate the golden throne, posing as the governor's secret messenger. However, Red and Frog fail to carry the throne out of the bay and are later captured by Don Alfonso, who puts them in prison. Maria-Dolores visits them in their cell. She reveals her feelings toward Jean-Baptiste as the two embrace and share a kiss. Maria-Dolores returns to the Neptune, which soon sets off to Spain again, with Don Alfonso promoted to captain.

The pirates, informed by Boomako of what has happened, assault the prison the following night, releasing Red and Frog. Captain Red pursues the Neptune and launches an assault on the galleon. Red sinks his own ship, making retreat impossible, and secretly orders Boomako to prepare a boat in order to make off with the golden throne. In the heat of battle, Frog finds Maria-Dolores and duels with Don Alfonso over her. However, in the end, he remains loyal to Captain Red, abandoning the fight with Don Alfonso in order to aid his leader in capturing the throne. With the Neptune burning and beyond repair, her remaining crew and passengers flee on the boat, while Red, Frog, and Boomako make off in one of their own with the golden throne in their possession. With Maria-Dolores out of his reach now, a furious Frog throws insults at Don Alfonso, who tries to shoot him in retaliation. However, Maria-Dolores intervenes desperately, disrupting his aim, and Boomako is shot dead instead. Red and Frog then leave the scene, abandoning their surviving crewmates in the water.

The last scene from the film mirrors the first one, with Red and Frog finding themselves alone on a small boat in the open ocean once again.

• Walter Matthau as Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red
• Cris Campion as Jean-Baptiste/The Frog
• Charlotte Lewis as María-Dolores de la Jenya de la Calde
• Roy Kinnear as Dutch
• Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Moonhead
• Damien Thomas as Don Alfonso de Salamanca de la Torre
• Olu Jacobs as Boomako
• Ferdy Mayne as Captain Linares
• David Kelly as Surgeon
• Anthony Peck, Anthony Dawson, Richard Dieux, and Jacques Maury as Spanish officers
• Jose Santamaria as Master at Arms
• Robert Dorning as Commander of Marines
• Luc Jamati as Pepito Gonzalez
• Emilio Fernández as Angelito
• Wladislaw Komar as Jesus

Riding on the success of the highly acclaimed Chinatown, Roman Polanski began to write a screenplay for a swashbuckling adventure film called Pirates alongside his regular collaborator, Gerard Brach.[5]

"I feel like doing something entertaining", he said in 1976. "I feel like doing something I would like to see. I'm a great customer of Disneyland. Everytime I go on the pirates' ride I think I would like to do a film."[6]

Polanski recalled that at the time "movies were very much loaded with messages and the desire to educate. Pirates was somehow a reaction to that", he said later. "I think the young audience will enjoy it more than the adults, and that's really what I intended."[7]

Originally, Polanski intended Jack Nicholson to play the central role of Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red, a grizzled old pirate, and Polanski himself would play Red's sidekick. Then complications arose partially due to the enormous fees Nicholson was demanding. (According to Polanski, when Nicholson was asked what exactly he wanted, he replied, "I want more.")[8]

Polanski also wanted Isabelle Adjani to play the female lead. When production was postponed he made The Tenant instead, which he rewrote for Adjani. In 1976 he said he aimed to make Pirates the following year in England and Malta and that he would act in the film but only play a small role.[6]

However production was put back even further after Polanski was arrested in California in 1977 on charges including rape by use of drugs of a minor Polanski fled the United States to avoid sentencing.[8]

While in France, Polanski made Tess. In September 1980 he announced he had signed a deal with Filmways to make Pirates.[9] In October Arnon Milchan announced he would produce the film, which would be shot in Tel Aviv the following year at a budget of $24 million. Milchan would build a studio there at a cost of $2.5 million, which would have a marine tank. The film would have no major names, as all the money would go into special effects and the set.[10] Polanski called the film "a comedy adventure, in the style of 'Treasure Island' or that Disneyland pirate ride, the kind of thing you dream of as a child." Co-wroter Brach called it "a classical, stereotypical story, on which I worked very hard in order not to do something foolish."[11]

Polanski's legal issues meant the film could not be made in the US. He said:

The people who finance films don't care what your personal problems are, your image, whatever. They're interested in figures. They look them up the same way an insurance company does. And they know that if they spend $5 million or $6 million, $10 million on a film by me, their risk is quite limited. But once you have a subject complicated, more ambitious, like Pirates, even if you have a delightful script and great enthusiasm, even if you promise them heaven, they are afraid. That has nothing to do with my legal problems in America. What do they care for it? Do you think that they have a moral streak in them, that they really hesitate?[8]

Filming began in Tunisia in November 1984.[20]

By the time shooting began the budget had blown out to $40 million – Matthau and Polanski each commanded $1 million and the galleon built for the film cost $7–8 million, with $10 million spent on constructing two sound stages.[21]

The full scale galleon was built in a shipyard in the port of Port El Kantaoui situated at the city of Sousse, Tunisia, adjacent to the Tarak Ben Ammar Studios, which had been constructed exclusively for this production. An accurate replica above the waterline, but sporting a steel hull and a 400 HP auxiliary engine, the Neptune was and still is entered into the Tunisian naval registry, and is currently a tourist attraction in the port of Genoa, where its interior can be visited for a 6 euro fee.[22] The galleon was not finished until 21 April 1985, five months later than intended, and ran into a storm.[23]

Filming was extremely problematic, the shoot cursed by poor weather and a number of accidents.[8]

"Another producer might have torn his hair out by now, or developed an ulcer or swallowed lots of tranquilizers", said Ben Ammar during the shoot. "But it's only a movie... Sure it's important to me that Pirates be a hit, but it's also important that by building the boat in this country, where unemployment stands at around 20 percent, I gave 2,400 people work for two years. Yes, Polanski does seem to be disaster-prone, but his talent is so great that wonderful actors like Matthau and the top European technicians all wanted to work here with him. Pirates is giving my staff lessons in filmmaking money couldn't buy."[14]

"I find Polanski riveting and fascinating", said Matthau. "He's like an orchestra conductor. He gives you a sound, but you play it as you want. If you get inspired, he leaves you alone. This is an extreme example, but if you could get a black cat to jump onto your neck, he'd put it in the movie."[14]

Ammar and fellow producer Thom Mount were unhappy with the involvement of MGM/UA and eventually raised the funds to buy them out of the film.[24] Cannon Films agreed to distribute.

On 14 May 2010, actress Charlotte Lewis and her attorney Gloria Allred accused director Roman Polanski of predatory sexual conduct against her when she was 16 years old, claiming that Polanski insisted that she sleep with him in return for casting her in Pirates.[25]

The film opened the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

The film's original estimated budget, while Polanski was aligned with Paramount on the picture, was $15 million, but the final budget is estimated to have been US$40 million. The reported gross box office revenues in the United States was $1.64 million[2] and $6.3 million worldwide.[3][26]

"We make mistakes", said Globus of Cannon. "Pirates was one of them. . . . We will lose $1 million or $2 million. . . . It hurts. It teaches us a very big lesson that we should not even take for distribution a picture which we don't have all the rights."[27]

"For character and atmosphere I would give it four stars", said Matthau. "I would not give it four stars for plot and action. I will say that Polanski is a genius for making an atmosphere seem real. Most films have a counterfeit quality to them."[19]

Despite the film's financial failure, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Pirates received a mostly negative to mixed critical reception and currently holds a 30% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on ten reviews, with an average score of 4.56/10.[28] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[29]

Colin Greenland reviewed Pirates for White Dwarf #85, and stated that "Polanski being Polanski has made everything look so disgusting and filthy and diseased it's also too realistic, if anything. There's a bit where the desperado duo are forced to eat a boiled rat – oh you've heard about that bit, have you?"[30]

• List of biggest box office bombs
• Cutthroat Island, another high-profile pirate film that was not a major success.

• Roman by Roman Polanski

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pirates (movie).

• Pirates at IMDb
• Pirates at AllMovie
• Pirates at Box Office Mojo
• Neptune - photo of the galleon built for the film Pirates, now in Genoa.