Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Gina Davis and crew overact so much it makes me cringe. The humor is so simple that you can virtually finish everyone's lines before they do. Everyone overacts with such drama and gusto, that if someone had said they were going to make a sandwich, it'd be said as if they were going to do something that may sink the ship, and would take 10 minutes of sandwich making/dramatic discussion. Boring, overacted, over dramatized and childish writing. I've walked out of other movies not because they were awful, but simply because they weren't my style. I can't honestly figure out who would get into this movie. Perhaps people who've never seen a movie? I love Gina Davis, but the director and script steered her toward a performance that any first year drama student could have pulled of just as well.

This Geena Davis vanity project, directed by then husband Renny Harlin, is remembered primarily—if it's remembered at all—as one of the biggest box office bombs of all time ($10 million gross on a $100 million dollar budget). Geena Davis is way out of her depth (pun!) as the Pirate Captainess Morgan Adams, but it's not the action stuff where she comes up short. Her performance here is simply dreadful. And co-star Matthew Modine is... well, he's Matthew Modine. To his credit, the normally comatose actor does manage to squeeze every last ounce of charisma out of himself. Unfortunately, an ounce is about all that he has. With its rousing (if perhaps relentless) John Debney score, a few well staged action sequences, intermittently witty script and strong villain (Played by the great Frank Langella), "Cutthroat Island" could've been an above average swashbuckler with better leads.

It's a mystery that will probably never be solved. Why did this film flop so badly whilst the Pirates of the Caribbean did so well? I don't even know anyone who has been able to stay awake right until the end of POTC part 3, a film so long that people have used up their entire annual leave watching it and still not got to the end. People who claim to have seen part 4 are clearly lying.Anyhow, Cutthroat Island delivers everything that you want to see in a swashbuckler and it does it in a sensible amount of time without filler and without a gazillion CGI shots. Geena Davis is very winning as the lead, the cinematography is excellent and the score is outstanding. Bears comparison with anything from the Golden Age of swashbuckling.Now this would have been a good basis for a franchise.

I remember this as one of my childhoods greatest action/adventure movies. Being a great fan of any good pirate story, I just had to re-watch it as an adult.What I found was a movie almost as good as I remember it. As an adult, I would of course smirk a bit at plot holes and some of the cheesy choreography (by which I mean such things as a bunch of Carolinians standing still in the middle of a battle, almost 'waiting' for the coming bomb to go of, or the 'good guys' appearing out of nowhere right behind the said Carolinians). But never mind that! Let's focus on the good things instead.It starts in the middle of a scene in which we are introduced to two of the main characters, the protagonist and the antagonist. The incident makes us understand that the protagonist (the pirate captain) is a well known pirate with a reputation, and the antagonist (a highly reputable politician) has got a taste for pirate flesh (on several levels, I might add). We quickly get into the story, and along the story goes on, we are introduced to more and more details about the persons and what has happened "before the movie". A plus is that it's not like thrown in your face at the end. Another mark on the good side is all the playing around with details typical for the pirate genre (by which I mean both books and movies, of course). But it never really gets cliché! Sometimes the movie is on the edge to get so, but never quite takes that final step over. We got a treasure island (Cutthroat Island), a bunch of hilarious/funny/goofy/kick ass pirates fighting each other and the 1600s government, some clever lines, a few bottles of rum and the Caribbean landscape. What else can you ask for in a pirate movie? The stunts, effects, acting and editing are never less than so-so, sometimes really good. Bare in mind that it was made almost twenty years ago, and the conditions as we have today wasn't really the same (which makes it easier for me to watch ... I know films from today that are far worse made). On the hole: if you would like to watch a good ol' pirate movie, with all the necessary ingredients, this is the one for you. I you are not a fan of pirate movies, but would like to change your mind, this is definitely the one for you!