Excellent, a Must See

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this with my sister and some friends on a double feature with "Meteor." Neither movie was that good, but my sister preferred "Hurricane," other friends and I believe, because it was a love story. And that's it! I loved when one of the people I saw it with said it sucked. Roger Ebert picked it as the worst movie of 1979, which was something of a pleasant surprise for some of us LOL.The old adage about the scenery and cinematography apply well enough here, but all I remember was a few minutes here and there. That's probably for the best. The movie was plodding and took forever...and ever..and ever...to get to anything. Then it ended! I occasionally teased my sister about it, and she blew up LOL. "I like it, you don't!" She would yell. Nuff said.

Hurricane (1979) * (out of 4) This Dino De Laurentiis remake of John Ford's 1937 classic will always be remembered for two things. One is that the $22-million budget, which ended up losing money. The second thing is that this was the movie Roman Polanski was suppose to be making before fleeing the United States. After seeing this film I'm starting to believe that perhaps Polanski was fleeing having to make this wretched thing. A white woman (Mia Farrow) goes to the island of Samoa to stay with her Naval officer father (Jason Robards). Once on the island the white woman breaks a taboo and begins a relationship with a native (Dayton Ka'ne) who has already been promised to another woman. Soon we have double crossed love, a court trial and then a large hurricane that rips through. HURRICANE is a disaster movie in the purest sense because it really is a complete disaster from the opening frames to the closing credits. There's not a single thing that goes right with this thing and I guess it would be easy to throw some blame towards Polanski since his departure pretty much threw the production into the air where they had to bring in another director very quickly. It's clear that director Troell can't handled anything here and I can't say I blame him because the screenplay is also quite horrid. They have Farrow and Ka'ne running around like a couple teenage virgins and their "romance" scenes together are so laughable that you can't help but think of THE BLUE LAGOON and consider that movie a masterpiece in comparison. Another problem is that the entire taboo subject matter just isn't all that taboo and you can't help but feel they're making a lot out of nothing. I'm sure the racial, political and religious tensions could have made for an interesting movie but the film never really looks at any of it. The performances by the all-star cast are just another reminder that actors signed onto pictures like this to cash a paycheck. Robards sleepwalks through the entire film and I'm curious if he even remembered doing it. Farrow gives one of the worst performances I've seen from her as she hasn't an inch of energy and really brings the film to a halt. Trevor Howard, James Keach, Timothy Bottoms and Max von Sydow aren't any better. The film is a remake of the Ford film but they share very little in common outside the setting, a few other plot points and of course the hurricane. I think it's important to show this picture and the original together whenever people say old movies can't hold up with current technology. Just show people the hurricane sequence from both versions and I think people will see that the original holds up incredibly well and still looks effective while the stuff here is decent but you will be wondering where all the money went.

Have you heard the old LP or CD score for this film? It is one of the most exquisite suites of film music ever created. Memorable and infinitely playable at home. Friends say: "what is that lovely music?" and you say: "the love theme from Hurricane, you know, with Mia Farrow." They do not understand and you just keep sashaying about as you serve a tray of crackers with pineapple chunks. Sadly though, HURRICANE was a monumental disaster of its own when released in 1979. Here in Sydney Australia it played the 900 seat ASCOT Theatre, built for My Fair Lady (alas that never screened there) but found huge success with 70mm spectaculars like SWEET CHARITY and RYANS DAUGHTER, two films that struggled overseas but ran for over 12 months each in Sydney. Perhaps that was the reason HURRICANE went in, after all, the Ascot also had a 60ft cinema-scope screen, and HURRICANE looked as spectacular as SOUTH PACIFIC meets THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, given this film was set both in the 1920s and on Bora Bora. Within 2 weeks, the distributor sent another print to the theater. Gone was half an hour, and HURRICANE shrank from 120 mins to 90mins overnight. Other comments here complain about how boring it is, but really, it isn't, HURRICANE is quite exquisite, a bit silly, and a lot beautiful... then whoosh, mighty seas and winds that see our ukulele crossed lovers up a tree. Great special effects, a church squashed by a freighter in the middle of the storm, and that heavenly plunking and strumming. HURRICANE deserves re appraisal and a DVD release with extras, set and costume pix and clips, and maybe Mia Farrow and Timothy Bottoms hosting a chat. It was made with real heart and basically is a slow tropical drama with a mighty windy finale. But that music! Oh! so sublime.

One of the worst movies ever made. It's a remake of a 1937 disaster epic, which I haven't seen, and it's so impossibly dull, so lifeless and enervated that my guess is, if you ever start watching it, you won't finish it through. The climactic hurricane sequences are OK, but not really spectacular by today's standards - and how many viewers will have survived the 90 minutes that the movie takes to get there? Lots of good actors (Farrow, Von Sydow, Timothy Bottoms) are pitifully wasted. Don't say you weren't warned.