What the Hell Were They Thinking?!
Too bad this wasn’t swept away into the trash can.
Cast of Characters:
Amber Leighton – Madonna
Giuseppe Esposito – Adriano Giannini
Marina – Jeanne Tripplehorn
Tony Leighton – Bruce Greenwood
Debi – Elizabeth Banks
Todd – Michael Beattie
Michael – David Thornton
Director – Guy Ritchie
Writer – Guy Ritchie
Producer – Matthew Vaughn
Distributor – Sony Pictures Releasing
Rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity.
Amber Leighton (Madonna) is a 40-year-old spoiled, foul-mouthed, pampered, snooty, arrogant prima Donna who’s impossible to please. Not even her wealthy, pharmaceutical kingpin husband Tony (Bruce Greenwood) can make her happy.
Well, gee – I hate her already.
When Tony takes Amber and some friends on a private cruise from Greece to Italy, Amber’s her usual bitchy self, particularly with the ship’s first mate Giuseppe “Pepe” Esposito (Adriano Giannini). But when a storm leaves her and Giuseppe shipwrecked on a deserted island, they are forced to deal with each other.
And worse, we’re forced to deal with both of them.
I hope they die.
Swept Away is a remake of the 1974 Italian film of the same name that starred Oscar-nominated actor Giancarlo Giannini, who own son Adriano stars here in the role he originally played.
Stunt casting, for the win!
This time around, the updated version is brought to us by writer/director, dark comedy crime caper extraordinaire Guy Ritchie and longtime producing partner Matthew Vaughn, who’d later go on to become a damn good director in his own right with Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and Kingsman: The Secret Service.
He also made Argylle, but I… I… you know, I still need time to heal before I can forgive him for that dog shit.
Ritchie’s career kicked off with a bang in 1998 with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and continued strong with 2000’s Snatch starring Jason Statham, Dennis Farina and Academy Award winners Benecio del Toro and Brad Pitt. His career knew no bounds and was just getting warmed up.
And then this film happened.
…
God help us.
Why would a filmmaker with a very distinct style choose to do a film that centers primarily on just two characters stuck on a sparsely decorated deserted setting? The only answer I can think of is simply nepotism. And boy, does Ritchie’s nepotism shine bright all over the screen here like the sun exploding into supernova the way he places the spotlight entirely on his then wife Madonna for all the world to see just how shrill of an actress she truly is.
On second thought, this can’t be nepotism. As much of a spoiled, catty little bitch as Amber is, along with the never-ending barrage of physical and verbal abuse that Ritchie has his betrothed go through, they had to have been on the outs and this was his way of really sticking it to her.
Or maybe Madonna really is that big of a cunt, making her perfect for the part? Given how unconvincing her performance is, I guess we’ll never know the answer.
Ritchie’s version is said to be quite faithful to the original – which explores themes of gender, political and class divides – deviating only with an altered ending. Here, when they say faithful, they must be referring to just the title the two films share ’cause you’ll find deeper, more thought-provoking subtext in a Jackass film.
“Hi, I’m Johnny Knoxville, and on today’s Jackass, Steve-O’s gonna tongue punch this octopus’s fart-box, while the whole gang runs a train on this mouthy, blonde bitch – YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAW!!!!!!!!”
Seriously, though, it just makes no sense as to what could possibly have attracted Ritchie to remake this movie. Typically, when a director wants to remake a movie, you can see something from the original that fits the director’s filmmaking sensibilities. You can see why Steven Soderbergh would want to remake a slick casino heist picture like Ocean’s Eleven. There’s no question as to why John Carpenter was the perfect choice to remake The Thing from Another World or David Cronenberg with The Fly or Martin Scorsese with The Departed or Peter Jackson with King Kong and so on. Those all make sense. Ritchie, however, is a director best known for slick, snappy-dialogued, kinetically-edited gangster/crime capers… and he’s somehow interested in remaking a small, Italian arthouse flick from the ’70s?
Honestly, Tommy Wiseau remaking 12 Years a Slave makes more sense.
Also, somebody get in touch with Wiseau and make that movie happen.
“I did not whip her. It’s not true. It’s bull shit. I did not whip her. I did naaaahht… Oh, hi, Solomon.”
For a filmmaker known for his witty dialogue and engaging sense of style, it’s almost a tragedy to sit through a first-act of Ritchie’s that is nearly thirty minutes of the most inane, dumbed-down babbling disguised as intellectual social commentary. To say the characters’ juvenile arguments are on par with an elementary class debate team would be an insult to elementary debate participants who could probably argue circles around these screeching socialite monkeys.
“DeRrRrRrRr – CaPiTaLiSm Is BaD!!”
“YeAh, BuT – uH – dErRrRrRrR – cOmMuNiSm Is BaD!!”
But wait! It gets worse. ‘Cause then we are treated to Madonna spending, at minimum, a good ten excruciatingly long minutes going on and on and on and on about the fish.
Yes, the fish. The fucking fish. She doesn’t like that fish. She wants this fish and she wants it tonight. But not Pee Pee’s fish. She doesn’t want Pee Pee’s fish. Fish that isn’t Pee Pee’s fish? Now that is what she calls fish. Attention, ladies and gentlemen, Pee Pee will not be in charge of the fish. Amber will be in charge of the fish now.
God, I hope the salmonella she contracts from her beloved, specially chosen fish eviscerates her asshole like an apocalyptic, straight out of the bowels of hell, extinction level blast ripping RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF YELLOWSTONE!!
And that there, ladies and germs, brings us to the film’s most damning problem that it in no way is able to overcome: Amber Leighton herself, the most insufferable, unbearable, unlikable, irritatingly intolerable she-Devil to ever ungracefully appear onscreen.
Let’s just call a spade a spade here. Madonna’s performance sucks major ass. She’s flat, shrill and exhibits the emotional range of a coma. If there was any evidence needed to prove that her endearing supporting turn in A League of Their Own was pure chance lightning in a bottle, it’d be this film… and every other film she did not named A League of Their Own and Dick Tracy. But let’s extend a little bit of fairness to Miss Material Girl. Give this part to Kate Winslet, Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Frances McDormand, Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Katharine fucking Hepburn for all I care. Not even all their talents, strengths, performance chops and emotional nuances coming together and merging into one colossally massive orb of omnipotent, supernatural, powerhouse acting energy ain’t changing the fact that this woman is so irredeemable hateful she easily gives the strongest argument there ever will be in defense of domestic violence.
Amber’s whining and nagging and bitching and moaning; constantly referring to Pepe as “Pee Pee” (she’s either that much of a condescending bitch or just that stupid… or both); insulting Pepe, an ITALIAN who is MUCH TALLER than she is, as a “hairy black midget” (again, either that much of a condescending bitch or just that stupid… or both) – this woman is every bit as grating as the world’s worst irritants. You name it: nails on a chalkboard, the rapid click-click-click-clicking of a pen from someone close to you, those squawking women from The View set on a never-ending loop, paper cuts, Fred Durst just rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ and nasally ranting his obscene little heart out with Limp Bizkit.
You really don’t know why, but you wanna justify rippin’ someone’s head off… until you meet Amber, then there’s no justification needed and the why becomes perfectly clear.
But then something happens about halfway through, and it’s honestly miraculous. Just when you’ve about had it with Amber and are so close to going all reverse Ring on her ass by reaching through the TV screen and strangling her to death, Ritchie amazingly whips out balls big and brazen enough to even attempt to turn this woman into a sympathetic figure. Granted, that ship has sailed away, crashed and sank deep down, all the way down to the bottom of the sea from the very first moment she opens her extremely punchable mouth. So how does Ritchie remedy such a downright impossible feat? Well, he simply defeats the villain by having Pee Pee become the villain right back to her, which comes out of nowhere as he’s more a scruffy, shaggy-haired pretty boy who really never gives us any impression that he’s got this inner Ike Turner just itching to burst out of him. But as much as we’d all love to see that aggressively annoying witch woman get her more than just comeuppance, the problem is Pepe cranks his levels of obnoxiousness all the way up next to hers, thereby making it impossible to sympathize for him or root for him as he turns the tables on Amber.
So, yeah. Thanks for the buy one, get one free offer on unbearable assholes, Ritchie.
See, there’s no character development nor any honest exchange of dialogue between Pepe and Amber. Changes of heart between them occur abruptly at any random given moment, with no rhyme or reason given to them, making any change of heart Ambert appears to have disingenuous. One moment, she’s letting him batter dip his corn dog, the next he’s landing a good strong right hook up against her jaw. Eventually, it got to the point where I was hoping and praying for a pair of venomous snakes to come slithering out of one of those sandy island bushes and pump them both full of liquid death. Preferably neurotoxic elapids too, if geographically applicable, that way the venom gives their central nervous system a good, hard kick in the ass, before shutting down all their vital organs by way of nerve paralysis as they then suffocate to death.
See what this film has done to me? It’s turned me into a calculating, pre-meditative sociopath.
But let Swept Away be a lesson to all you men out there. If you wanna get some, just verbally, physically, emotionally and psychologically abuse your gal until she breaks. Then bam-bam in the ham, attack that pink fortress with all you got.
For the record, another stranded island film, Cast Away, showcased greater chemistry between Tom Hanks and an inanimate volleyball… just saying.
And, believe it or not, they also made a cuter and far more believable couple.
…
Poor Wilson… He never stood a chance out there at sea.
Judgment: Lacking style, substance, subtext, intelligence, dialogue, heart, depth, performance, passion, humanity, energy, chemistry – hell, I’m sure even the flunky that gets everyone’s coffee and donuts in the morning phoned in their responsibilities – Swept Away is a horrendous black mark on Guy Ritchie’s otherwise fine career that has the massive, steaming stench of failure smeared all over it. Not since the RMS Titanic swept away 1,500 lives down to the unforgiving depths of the Atlantic has a shipwreck appeared this devastating.
Sentence: Fifty years stranded on Amber and Pee Pee’s deserted paradise. Though if you can make it past just ninety minutes without succumbing to the urge to kill yourself, I’ll consider it time served.
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