Swashbuckler (1976)

This movie suffered, IMO, from being sandwiches between "Jaws" (with Robert Shaw) and "Star Wars" (with the voice of James Earl Jones). It moves along at a quick pace with great sword work, snappy lines, and amazing performances from one of the best ensembles of talent ever put together on the screen. Red Ned's character development has layers (from "I'm a pirate," to "I'm an Irishman," to "Revolutionaries, pirates . . . we're all men"), Genevieve never looked better, and the look JEJ gives Peter Boyle is punctuated by one of the best social justice lines this side of the Seventies. You CANNOT go wrong with this movie!

I rented this film solely because Robert Shaw starred in it. I've yet to see him in anything where I didn't like him (even if the movie was crap), and I thought I couldn't go too far wrong with a movie where he plays a pirate.The Shaw stars as Ned Lynch, a vermilion-clad pirate who sails around basically haranguing Jamaica. Lynch has to rescue his first mate Nick Debrett (James Earl Jones, no doubt preparing for a similar role in the similarly bad King Solomon's Mines) from the clutches of the evil Lord Durant (Peter Boyle), and in the midst of doing so runs into Jane Barnet (Genevieve Bujold), the daughter of the real governor of Jamaica. It seems that Durant has usurped power and is killing people right and left on a whim, and Lynch is "a man of the people" (from the long-winded intro) who naturally opposes tyranny, megalomania, etc. While there's a lot of mucking around on the island, there's actually very little sailing, and after about a half-hour Ned agrees to help Jane because he's getting soft on her (she offers him money to kill Durant, but that's hardly his real incentive). The pirates make a hasty alliance with almost everyone on the island, brokered chiefly by the oddball Cudjo (Geoffrey Holder, known to those of you old enough as "the 7-up guy" from the 70s, or alternately as Baron Samedhi from Live and Let Die). So basically all of Jamaica storms the fortress, which leads to a showdown between Durant and Lynch. Guess who wins? The movie's fun to watch because it's so irredeemably bad. Beau Bridges has a role as the expectedly useless henchman, Major Folly; he's Dumb and Dumberer stupid, so dim only several generations of inbreeding could explain it. Shaw mostly seems to be having fun in a nice warm location, and Jones gives it a game try with a Jamaican accent, but no one's taking things very seriously. You can tell they thought the script was bad because right in the middle – for absolutely no reason – Bujold strips naked and dives off the ship into the water. The Shaw gallantly rows out to retrieve her, so we don't actually see anything except for the long shot, but it's telling that the producers thought that a pirate movie would need a little T&A to shake you awake. Also, for reasons unknown, Avery Schreiber tags along as a Polish pirate with no lines who is merely there to be made fun of.But far exceeding every other aspect of the film in craptacularosity is Peter Boyle's 'performance' as Lord Durant. Granted, the writing sinks to particularly hokey depths where the villain is concerned; but Boyle plays the man so outrageously, so grandstandingly, that one is reminded of Clancy Brown's infamous turn as the Kurgan in the first Highlander film, or any of Tim Curry's overacted roles, or even Jeremy Irons in D&D. Boyle is that over-the-top, so stupefyingly bad, that he carves a niche for himself in the list of cinema's all time worst villains (anyone who cries out, "Lower the curtains, the farce has ended!" as he plummets to his death deserves some kind of recognition. It's hard to be that bad).Swashbuckler never tries to take itself seriously, and nor should you. It has been justly forgotten, and certainly I never would have bothered had not The Shaw graced the film with his presence. The only real question is, is this film worse than Cutthroat Island? No. But it's close.

Only the most deadly serious of us can stay mad at Swashbuckler, a ludicrous popcorn sack of a movie, made to capitalize on the star power of Robert Shaw, on the high seas as a pirate. I saw this movie when it made the rounds on HBO almost thirty years ago.The memory is fuzzy except for three things: Robert Shaw had enough charisma to carry a movie on his own, pirate movies-by nature--are usually fun, and Genevieve Bujold jumps off a ship, stark naked.Now, seeing Bujold naked is not a bad thing, but it's hardly the reason to track this movie down. I'd stick with the whole shiver-me-timbers, ship models blasting away at each other, eye-patches, and stuffy Royal Navy officers thing to justify the search.Besides, the full frontal of Genevieve is for about a second anyway. They must have thrown that in to keep the movie from being pure vanilla.

If one can simply recall that movies are to take us away, whether from or to is personally specific, then it would take a profoundly negative person to think poorly of any well made and well acted movie. This is such a flick, decently focused relative to plot, well chosen costuming and locations, great cinematography . . . what more can you ask? If you want a 'film', with all its highbrow silliness, it's true you might not wanna go there with this one, but jeez, does anyone who only goes to 'films' even tell anyone else they know that they're painfully pretentious? This one has no pretensions, and since when is Genevieve in any state of undress a minus? Good entertainment, which is what I want when i spend money on a movie, and Swashbuckler delivers with aplomb.JGS