The Bounty (1984)

This is the third adaptation of the vintage story of mutiny during the turbulent voyage based on one of history's greatest true life sea adventure . It's a revisionist version very well played and with marvelous scenarios . This account of the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian against captain Bligh is highlighted thanks to glamorous cinematography by Arthur Ibbetson and emotive , haunting musical score by Vangelis . Interesting portrayal of the Bligh's Anthony Hopkins who bears little relation to Charles Laughton and Trevor Howard version . Extremely memorable acting by Anthony Hopkins who brings his own powerful individualism to contrasting role of Mel Gibson with opposing attitude whose inevitable clash receives greatest importance . Furthermore , a sensual and romantic Mel Gibson-Christian relationship with Tahitian beauty named Tivaite . Secondary cast is frankly excellent , Liam Neeson , Daniel Day Lewis , Bernard Hill , Laurence Olivier , Edward Fox ... Compelling direction by Roger Donaldson who captures the feel of sea and harshness of the times . It's much better than 'Mutiny on the Bounty (1962' version by Lewis Milestone with Marlon Brando , Trevor Howard, and Hugh Griffith but inferior to classic 'Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)' by Frank LLoyd with Clark Gable , Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone .

The real deeds are the following : In 1787, Captain Bligh was chose to command HMS Bounty on a voyage to Tahiti, where he was to collect breadfruit trees with the object of introducing them to the Caribbean. Captain Bligh is determined to reach Tahiti and return with a hold full of breadfruit trees. When the ship sailed after a six-month stay on the island, Bligh's men mutinied , casting him and a handful of loyal crew members adrift with scant provisions and no chart. Bligh's incredible seamanship brought them safely to Timor after a voyage of 4000 miles. Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers sailed on to the island of Pitcairn. The mutineers' fate remained in mystery for 18 years until their island was discovered by an American whaling ship , they found one man , John Adams, with nine women and 23 children. What happened Fletcher Christian remains uncertain, some say he was murdered on Pitcairn island, but then there were reports that he returned safely to England . However the descendants live on Pitcairn island to this day.

Fmovies: Not only is the story of Bligh and Christian the most famous mutiny in history, it is also the most filmed. It started with an Australian silent movie in 1916. The Aussies took another shot at filming the Bounty mutiny in 1933, providing a young Errol Flynn (as Fletcher Christian) with his first movie role. That was followed only two years later by the first American try with Charles Laughton in a tour-de-force performance as a sadistic Captain Bligh. Nearly thirty years passed before another movie attempted the story. The 1962 production remains controversial, as does Marlon Brando's affected turn as Christian. These earlier movies were based on the books by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall that portrayed the Bounty's commander, William Bligh, as a brutal disciplinarian and the second in command, Fletcher Christian, as a hero. The actual story is not so black and white. In Captain Bligh and Mister Christian: The Men and the Mutiny (1972), Richard Hough presented a more balanced account of the famous mutiny that is meticulously researched and shows keen psychological insight into the characters of the men involved. It is on Hough's book that The Bounty is based.

The Bounty has a lot going for it. It is based on Hough's book, perhaps the best account of the mutiny. The screenplay was written by Robert Bolt, who also wrote such classics as Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Man for All Seasons, and Ryan's Daughter. His work shows in the complex, fully realized characters that are the center of this story. And those characters are brought to life by an amazingly strong cast - Anthony Hopkins (an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs) as William Bligh, Mel Gibson (an Oscar for directing Braveheart) as Fletcher Christian, Daniel Day-Lewis (an Oscar for My Left Foot) as John Fryer, and Liam Neeson (nominated for an Oscar for Schindler's List) as Churchill. Of course, none of these actors were famous yet when they performed in The Bounty. Two film giants, Laurence Olivier and James Fox, make cameo appearances as Admiral Hood and Captain Greenham, respectively, members of the Court Martial that tries Bligh on his return to Britain. The rest of the cast is not so well known, but they are all excellent.

Anthony Hopkins' Bligh is definitely not a villain, but he is at best a flawed hero. Hopkins, as he always does, makes the character of Bligh completely believable. He is a superb seaman and a man of unquestioned courage. He is also a very capable leader in the right circumstances, but he has a quick temper and a tendency to shift responsibility from himself to others. And he is an ambitious man with no connections or influence in a society where those weigh as heavily as skill and competency. When the chance to make a name for himself seems to be drifting from his grasp, his frustration and anger is turned on those around him. Hopkins never seems to be acting. He becomes Bligh.

Mel Gibson was a bigger name actor than Hopkins even when this movie was made, but it is obvious that he is not quite in the same league. His is the weakest performance of the primary actors, but that's still not bad considering the caliber of this cast. He does a nice job of letting Fletcher Christian evolve from a rather shallow, genial fop into a tortured leader of a mutiny. He seems to work a little too hard at being the tormented soul during the mutiny but it's a good overall performance and does not detract from the story.

The Bounty does an especially fine job of showing the Tahitians as rea

No cast can beat the one in the Bounty. Just look at the list, Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Bernard Hill, Daniel Day Lewis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Oliver and even a young Neil Morrissey who puts in a good performance. I have seen three versions of The Bounty, the one with Clark Gable, the one with Brando and this and this version directed by Roger Donaldson is by far my favourite because it is so much more darker than the others. For one we have Anthony Hopkins as a caring but ruthless Captain Bligh who is hell bent on his ship sailing around Cape Town or something like that and the shipmen believe that doing it once was bad enough but doing it twice is suicide and that is where the film really kicks off but there are moments of tension between Bligh and Fletcher played by Mel Gibson and that's what makes this film all the more special than its predecessors.

If this film was made today with the same cast then it would not have had the same effect because it would have tried to win over it's audience with it's cast but the likes of Day Lewis, Liam Neeson and Mel Gibson were still unknowns in most countries and it was like an older version of the rat pack as they were the fresh faces coming up in the movies in 80's Hollywood especially for Gibson who just made action in the 80's apart from The Bounty and Gallipoli. What makes this movie all the more better was it's haunting soundtrack by Vangelis. Every scene in the film which contains a piece from the soundtrack is just spine tingling and the scene where Fletcher takes over the ship and the men are gathering together to mutiny is just fantastic.

It's not the best film ever but it feels like it when you watch it but then you take it in and you think of some of the scenes they could have included. A few more scenes between Bligh and Fletcher wouldn't have gone a miss and a bit more on Laurence Oliver's character but what we did see of him was more than enough and I shouldn't complain.

The Bounty fmovies. The latest retelling of this tale shifts a lot of the blame about the voyage over to Fletcher Christian and the fact that he and a lot of the crew had simply gone native.

One of the great villainous portrayals on the screen is Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh from the stirring 1935 film. Laughton is pretty unforgettable with that jutting lower lip and that bellowing voice at the crew. Anthony Hopkins has given us a kinder, gentler view of Bligh which may be far closer to the facts.

Bligh certainly was a stern taskmaster as a captain of a naval vessel. In fact he served with distinction in several naval battles during the Napoleonic wars. What he unfortunately had was a sarcastic tongue, something not really needed for what in fact was a peaceful voyage to obtain breadfruit plants.

Scurvy which is caused by a Vitamin C deficiency ran rampant on the ocean going ships of the time, none more so than in British ships because they had the most of them. This was a pretty important voyage, to bring back Tahitian breadfruit to see if it could be cultivated in the climate of the United Kingdom. Maybe the mistake was in not sending a civilian ship to do the job, who knows.

Anyway Bligh punished men who got out of line, no more so than what was normal. The problem arose when after months at sea, his crew got just too used to frolicking among the female population of Tahiti. That would also unfortunately include Bligh's second mate Fletcher Christian, played in this version by Mel Gibson.

It wasn't Bligh's fault they lingered in Tahiti, the plants had to be mature enough to stand the voyage to Great Britain. Nevertheless the lack of discipline there, contrasted with what was expected of British seaman on a naval vessel, a return to that life was what led to the mutiny.

Certainly Fletcher Christian by all accounts was a charismatic guy, he would have to have been to get the men to mutiny. He was portrayed by four charismatic actors, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, and now Mel Gibson. Only his intervention prevented the men from killing Bligh and a few others.

What I like most about this version is the fact that it does give due attention to Bligh's remarkable voyage in a long boat to Timor which was some 1500 miles from where he and the loyalists were cast adrift. It was a remarkable piece of seamanship, no mutinies during that voyage.

The luckless Captain Bligh also had the misfortune to be the Governor of New South Wales, appointed by the Crown, and was overthrown there in a power struggle with the merchants of the colony. That didn't help his historical reputation a bit.

Among the crew of the Bounty you will find Daniel Day-Lewis as John Fryer who Bligh replaced mid voyage with Fletcher Christian and Liam Neeson as one of the mutineers. Laurence Olivier plays Admiral Hood who led the court of inquiry that cleared Bligh of blame for the mutiny.

Still Hopkins and Gibson dominate the film with their skills and talents. Who knows who might bring the saga of this troubled ship next to the screen. This story has fascinated us for generations.

I'm only giving this film 8 stars, because as good as it is "the Bounty" still leaves some undeserved blots on the reputation of a great and courageous man. A bit more truth and this film would get a TEN from me.

There have been many film treatments of this amazing story, but only "The Bounty" gets it even halfway right. The 1935 Lawton/Gable "Mutiny on the Bounty" is 49% balderdash and 51% falsehood. The Trevor Howard/Marlon Bando stinker is even less factual. "The Bounty", however is pretty good history in many places, especially Bligh's court-martial and the actual mutiny sequence, which is almost word-for-word what Bligh recorded in his own writings on the matter. The ship itself is correctly represented, right down to the figurehead – a woman in a blue riding habit, which makes no sense until one realizes that HMAV Bounty was originally a merchant ship called the Bethia.

The movie does take liberties with history. Some characters are composites and some important figures are absent entirely. In the plot Bligh seeks out Christian to be his second officer. In reality Christian was a friend of Bligh's wife's family, and it was he who sought a posting on Bounty; Bligh didn't solicit his participation. In fact Bligh jiggered the ship's roster to make room for Christian.

But the worst departure from fact is the business about Cape Horn and circumnavigation. The movie wants us to believe that Bligh chose the route for his own glory. Not true. Bligh complained to the Admiralty about the chosen course before they set sail from England, thinking it too dangerous for such a small vessel. But he was overruled. The return trip was never intended to go by way of Cape Horn. The cargo was breadfruit seedlings, a tropical plant that can't endure the kind of temperatures encountered in the Drake Passage or the Straits of Magellan. Bligh was forbidden to return via this route. Even if he wanted to such a course of action would have ruined his career. Also the mutiny occurred near Tofua, about 1300 miles west of Tahiti, the wrong direction to sail if you're bound for Cape Horn.

Bligh was a man and a professional. Christian was a silly, overwrought upper class schoolboy who committed a vile crime over puppy love of a Polynesian girl. He got away with attempted mass murder, and 200 years later people still praise him. Bligh was a true hero who hasn't got justice yet.

Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Laurence Olivier, Liam Neeson, Bernard Hill....and the list goes on as you can see. Where are these people now? All making big hit movies. You can't help but love this movie. Every time I see it, I want to see it again. I know of no other movie that has had an impact like THAT on me before. Every actor in the movie was great. Also, notice that the mass of extras REALLY act like the real thing. That is rare, and hard to do. I was an extra in Sudden Death (Van Damme), and you can't help but look into the camera or do weird things. It's fun. Try an find some of the continuity errors in this movie. They're hard to find, VERY. I only found a few after seeing the movie 10-15 times. It's almost flawless. The scenery was breathtaking. I only regret not seeing the movie on the "big screen". I gave this movie 10+ points. There is nothing like it (obviously, my opinion). I thought it was one of Neeson's greatest roles, especially the beginning where "Quintal is in his seat". That scene was shot beautifully. Gibson's girlfriend is quite gorgeous. It's no wonder why he did what he did (now I'm getting to the movie again)... Enjoy!