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.
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