The Bounty

I am a huge Roger Donaldson fan, although I believe his film Thirteen Days (2000) about JFK and the Cuban missile crisis took too many liberties with the truth. This was probably a more realistic tale and one closer to the actual facts of the naval mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty than even the 1935 classic Academy award winner for Best Picture starring Oscar winners Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in the William Bligh and Fletcher Christian roles respectively. In this one, Hollywood's newest male sex symbol on the rise Mel Gibson is an idealistically charismatic foil to a much more complex and not-so-sadistic Captain Bligh portrayed by Anthony Hopkins. Although Laughton was already an Academy award winner for Best Actor (The Private Life of Henry VIII) when he and Gable sailed to Tahiti for exteriors in 1934, Gable was still largely unknown but would win the award for It Happened One Night before Mutiny On The Bounty was released. Hopkins (who won the Best Actor for the year 1991) and Gibson (the Best Director of 1995) were not yet household names, but not exactly nobodies either when they went to the islands in 1983. I believe this film The Bounty is the finest either ever appeared in although I can understand why The Silence of the Lambs won the prize in 1991 with Hopkins in the lead role, and why Gibson's Braveheart won the Best Picture of 1995, although the latter film took more license with history than even Oliver Stone's JFK (actually the Best Picture of 1991 imho). No less an authority than the legendary multiple Academy-Award winning director David Lean (Laurence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai) considered this version of the mutiny the finest screenplay he had ever read. He turned it down because of some arguments with Robert Bolt who won Academy awards for writing the scripts for Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965) and the following year for Fred Zinnemann's A Man For All Seasons, the 1966 Best Picture winner. This version of the infamous mutiny is equal in measure to the 1935 classic and in many ways vastly superior to the 1962 Trevor Howard/Marlon Brando movie, although I think Howard's Captain Bligh is a chillingly magnificent performance and that film's one saving grace. Marlon Brando (ironically like Mel Gibson also unfortunately a closet anti-Semite) was too over-the-top as Fletcher Christian and his British accent was an absolute hoot. He was also more famous at the time he portrayed Christian than either Gable or Gibson were when they tackled the part.In this 1984 version Gibson easily slips into the role of Lt. Christian as did Gable (then also Hollywood's sex god on the rise). Anthony Hopkins is great as Captain Bligh, although both Laughton and Howard are actually better, if far less human. Howard's Bligh is a sadistically cruel madman. Laughton was, by the way, Hopkins' favorite actor growing up, and he later played Quasimodo in the 1989 televised remake of Laughton's other great role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). The Welsh-born Hopkins, who also acted on stage in both Britain and America after his 1968 film debut in The Lion In Winter (which also starred Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn in the fourth of her record four Oscar wins) has had a stunningly superb career in many films of the 1970s and 1980s. He was never fully appreciated until his unforgettable performance as serial monster Hannibal Lector. I thought he deserved the Best Actor prize for this film as well as The Silence of the Lambs, but he wasn't even noticed by the Academy in 1984 and they gave the award to F. Murray Abraham for his astonishingly good performance as Mozart's jealous rival in Amadeus, which was also richly deserved. Amadeus, like The Bounty, is about a true life rivalry, and like Amadeus,The Bounty is simply a perfect time capsule of the late eighteenth century with wonderful cinematography, costumes, and excellent performances all-round. It will also be the only chance you'll ever have to watch legendary Academy award winners Gibson, Hopkins, Lord Laurence Olivier, as well as the future three-time Best Actor winner (and male record holder) Daniel Day-Lewis in the same film. Lewis, who portrays the diffident officer who is replaced by Christian as the second-in-command aboard the ship, would become nearly as big an actor as Gibson would a movie star, but here he makes much of a smaller role that is very fine but which went largely unnoticed. Sir Laurence (arguably the greatest actor of all time) appears in The Bounty as a British admiral conducting the inquest of Capt. Bligh. Another naval officer at the inquest is portrayed by Edward Fox, who was so great in The Day of the Jackal (1973), also directed by the great Fred Zinnemann. And yes, Liam Neeson, the future Academy award nominee for Schindler's List and son-in-law of Vanessa Redgrave, plays a sailor named Churchill (no relation to the aristocratic dynasty of the same name) and Bernard Hill, who would later portray the ill-fated Captain Smith in James Cameron's Academy-award winning 1997 blockbuster Titanic, appears as Bligh's trusted boatswain who quite literally whips the crew into shape, especially the unfortunate Neeson, who has since become a huge box office success in blockbusters to rival Mel Gibson's body of work.I can't recommend this film highly enough. It's fabulous on all counts, and the young (twenty-eight-year-old) Gibson, who would finally gain international stardom in the Lethal Weapon films, is just drop-dead gorgeous. His scenes with Tahitian princess Tia Carere are breathtaking to behold. So is she. The chemistry between them is beyond terrific. Thirty years on, we can doubly appreciate what once was, however bittersweet. Too bad he hasn't come to terms yet with middle-age and has become such an ungrateful bigot. This is still an exhilarating, though not exactly pleasant, journey down memory lane even if the tale itself (like Gibson's real life) doesn't have a happy ending. The revolt on the H.M.S. Bounty was the biggest story of its day and the most famous shipboard mutiny ever. Its a story that needed to be told on the big screen more than once and this version is hard to top.

I say this Movie is an Epic, because I think the producers and writers of this flick, were very true and accurate to the actual official records and details, as well as what actually happened on this fateful voyage and the mutiny on the Bounty.I especially liked the very end scenes, where they burn the Bounty, under the cliffs of Pitcairn at night, realizing this was the only way to keep hidden from British Navy ships, hunting for those mutineers. At least this scene, the ship burning at anchor, under the cliffs, no matter where it actually was filmed, looked like it was filmed on Pitcairn!I fault the 1964 movie version of "Mutiny On the Bounty!" starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard for using other views of Tahiti or Moorea Island, or wherever, as set scene for Pitcairn Island. Pitcairn is a tiny rock island with little flat arable land, barely over 2 miles long and one mile wide! The shots of Tahiti or Bora Bora, or wherever, made to depict Pitcarin, at the end of this movie, ruined it for me, because it is horribly inaccurate and historically incorrect. I knew better!As well, I think Brando and Howard screwed-up the parts they were acting, simply because Howard as Bligh, wasn't mad and maniacal enough as Bligh truly was, and Brando as Christian was just too laid back, until the very end.However, this older movie had going for it, the fact that: they used the only full scale hand built replica of the HMS Bounty, ever made, as the movie set! That 1964 film was shot mostly on the HMS Bounty, built by MGM just for that movie set, at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada. This ship was hand built by master craftsmen, Lunenburg shipbuilders had long been world-famous for!Going back to the movie The Bounty starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins as Bligh, at sea under pressure, quickly went absolutely bonkers on his crew, very abusive or the tinest infractions of the men and really showed us the true mad-man Bligh could be at the drop of a hat. Hopkins nailed the part of Bligh, to-the-letter!Gibson as Christian, acted his part superbly and his Aussie accent didn't hurt matters any, for belivability either! This team of main actors, had their parts down tight! They spoke the lines and played the parts, right along truest with history, as close to how it actually happened in this case, as I think can be done.That decision on the Mutineers part, once on Pitcairn Island; to burn the evidence and all trace of the ship, held them in good stead, kept them all well hidden from the outside world, for the next 18 years, well after Bligh was too old and no longer a threat, long time after the British Navy ceased their relentless sea search for these fugitives.I felt the writers and cast of The Bounty flick, had the crews feelings and reasonings, plus Christians reasons for actual mutiny, down tight with the actual facts. I also appreciate actual words Christian was quoted, (by Bligh and the others set adrift with him in the launch, at the mutineers court martial in England), in this pic, they used the very words Christian yelled at Bligh, during the Mutiny. They also had the lines and actions true to actual life as it happened on the Bounty, after the mutiny. Christian as mutineer Captain, always on guard, day and night, to keep this rebellious batch of mutineers from slitting his throat. IF Christain had not stumbled-upon Pitcairn Island by accident, hundreds of miles from where it was charted on the maps, that last morning at sea, I think the mutineers would've killed him, soon.Unfortunately Christian and most of his men, the mutineers of The Bounty; died on Pitcairn Island, in the earliest years of their purposeful marooning there. Only John Adams lived to write and tell the actual story of the mutiny and life aboard the Bounty under Christian, and finding Pitcairn by accident, and those first long 18 years of life in exile, on Pitcairn.I think everyone ought to, not only order this excellent DVD movie, The Bounty, but also the trilogy of books by Nordhoff & Hall: "Mutiny On The Bounty," "Men Against The Sea" and "Pitcairns Island."I also highly recommend the US English translation of the actual HMS Bounty Log Books written by Bligh, Christian and Adams, as well as the Log books kept on Pitcairn, those first long 18 years marooned there. If the latter is not in book form, there certainly are official web-sites that have those documents you can read! Its well worth your time!The Bounty is an epic excellently filmed pic, great acting by a great cast of actors!

Para ser una edición especial en Blu-ray deberían ampliar la cantidad de idiomas por lo menos en los subtítulos.

Love this film

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Il Bounty e' stato girato tre volte da tre registi e attori diversi - nel tempo. Anthony Hopkins e' un attore con alle spalle anni e anni di teatro - e si vede - e' un ''animale da palcoscenico'' di grande spessore. e' AMATO DA TUTTI/REGISTI /ATTORI/PUBBLICO/CRITICA. gli attori lavorando con lui IMPARANO..E un GRANDE e chi ama il buon cinema cerca di avere dvd dai suoi esordi nel cinema ad oggi. Tra l'altro ''il Baunty'' e' per tutti

The Bounty is the tragedy of a doomed trip to the South Pacific.In the 1700s writer Charles Nordhoff wrote a trilogy: Men Against The Sea, The Mutiny On the Bounty and also Pitcairn's Island.These three books are more or less encapsulated in this epic voyage shot obviously, on location in the South Pacific, Bora Bora, Sandwich Islands, Tofua, etc. At any event, it was filmed at some place or other that looks tropical.On an expedition to procure breadfruit for His Majesty King George the Third, ie loss of the American Colonies King George, the Madness of King George the Third et al of that fame.The Bounty half circumnavigates the globe and arrives in Fiji or wherever; Polynesia, Samoa? Anyways after the late harvest of the breadfruit brought about by the casual lifestyle as well as the very openly sexual lifestyle and the plentiful availability of sex everywhere and women with their breasts exposed walking around everywhere was more than anyone should be expected to take... The crew mutinies against the rule crazy Captain Bligh and turn against him in a tide of rebellion that sends him and his sympathizers to survive using their wits to finally arrive at a British outpost in the Dutch East Indies.Fletcher Christian and his crew of cutthroat brigands finally arrive at Pitcairn's Island, then an island off of most British whaling maps. They scuttle the ship. The islanders larcenous, murderous and cutthroat pirate ways persist and live on after the mutiny so about 40 years later when an American whaling ship discovers them, Fletcher Christian is by then long murdered or else returned to England under a presumed name. All the original 12 pirates except one or two have been murdered or else died of illness.This movie is stark and crazy precise in its painstaking attention to historical detail.The Bounty set a strange landmark for all films and after The Bounty, standards became higher for all films in general.The pretty young Mel Gibson appears in this film as the doomed and clean shaven Fletcher Christian.Anthony Hopkins makes a memorable performance as the sadistic naval taskmaster William Bligh, a Captain in the British Navy. His performance in this movie would be overshadowed by his future performance as the brilliant Doctor Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs based on the Thomas Harris novel.Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that "The British Navy is rum, sodomy and the lash." Liberal doses of two of the three of that is portrayed in this film. I will leave you to figure out which ones they are.