Treasure Island

Shiver-me-timbers, this is the best version of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic! In fact it is a model of cinematic adaptation. Closely following the book, with whole scenes and dialogue taken straight from its pages, the film never bogs down into the kind of stuffy lifelessness that sometimes afflicts adaptations attempting to be faithful to their literary source. Indeed Frazier Heston's screenplay and direction capture the brisk, page turning pleasure of the book nicely. Add to his sure direction, wonderful locations, a picture-perfect cast and a rousing music score by the Chieftains and you have one of the best pirate movies ever made. And for once they really are pirates and not watered down, sentimentalized versions of them. They're cut-throats all, a scurvy lot of thieves, superstitious and dirty. You can just smell their stench under the hot tropic sun and lush vegetation of Skeleton Island.

Oliver Reed as Billy Bones gets the movie going smartly. We first see him with his granite visage at the head of the skiff, an old sea dog home from the sea. With his great hulk and whiskey whisper purr he exudes danger from every rum soaked pore of his being. Of course his old shipmates, the remnants of the crew of the now dead Captain Flint, are pursuing him. Christopher Lee, almost completely unrecognizable, is Blind Pew, a spectral, skeletal figure of death, whose fury, fueled by blindness is like some great ravaging bird of prey. He is wonderful and like Reed he creates a vivid, memorable characterization. A young Christian Bale is the definitive Jim Hawkins. He narrates the proceedings and is at turns appealing, capable and wily. He is a boy on the verge of young manhood who is about to have his mettle tested with the adventure of a lifetime. There is not a trace of the Jackie Cooper mawkishness about him. Richard Johnson as Squire Trelawney, Julian Glover as Dr. Livesey, and Clive Wood as Captain Smollet are all perfect in their roles. They beautifully capture the essence of quiet courage. Heroes without phony heroics, they are solid men of character sure of themselves and quite capable of dealing with Silver and his scurvy crew.

This brings us to Charlton Heston as Long John Silver. Ultimately for any version of this work to succeed it rests on the shoulder of the actor portraying the Sea Cook. Happy to say, Heston gives one of the best performances of his long career. Turning his stalwart, forthright screen persona on its head, he creates a monster that is complex, charismatic, and bloodthirsty. There is no Wallace Beery, Robert Newton sentimentality here. This is a natural leader of men who can dazzle with his bigger than life personality and tales of treasure, and the next moment plunge his cutlass into the bowels of his victim without even missing a beat. Never has he used his toothy smile to better effect. It is the smile of a vicious carnivore-a shark. On a lighter note Nicholas Amer brings the right balance of levity and pathos as Ben Gunn, the poor maroon. He is amusing without becoming a caricature, and his scene with Jim when describes his yearning for a piece of toasted cheese is wonderful. Both Pete Postlewaite as George Merry and Michael Halsey as Israel Hands are perfectly nasty.

Finally the music score by the Chieftains is superb. It captures by turns the lilting Celtic love of the sea, the grace and sweep of a great sailing ship setting out for adventure and the exotic dangers of buried treasure, pirates, flashing cutlasses, and midnight rendezvous on a far away island in the balmy tropics. Avast, me hearties, this is a film to treasure!

In Fraser Heston's production of Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece, an obvious labor of love by all involved, the classic tale sidesteps another excessively kid-friendly incarnation to live and breathe as Stevenson meant it to. Although its made-for-TV scale pokes through now and then, it does so only momentarily in each case. These little blinks aside, this heartfelt reading of the classic adventure is a worthy piece of work. It's still family-safe but this time there's real menace interwoven with the book's more genteel sensibilities.

How a film begins is often crucial and this `Treasure Island' begins so beautifully, and correctly. A mournful pennywhistle solo ushers in an opening credit sequence that could have been filmed by the painter N.C. Wyeth, whose vision infuses many of the film's frames. I replay this sequence several times whenever I screen this film because it is so evocative. It also perfectly sets the tone for the entire movie; beautifully done. But if they had just held the rousing, though excellent, music back a bit longer and let the sequence walk through on its own legs, it would have been one of the most perfect opening sequences ever filmed.

Charlton Heston as Long John Silver? Don't laugh. His now-familiar voice occasionally surfaces through his 18th century pirate patois, but never detracts. Heston's portrayal is completely effective and is handled with restraint and relish, a fact that is evident the moment his Silver first appears. Silver emerges from the back room of his waterfront Bristol grog shop to confront Christian Bale's uneasy Jim Hawkins who, having walked into Silver's lair, is realizing that he may, quite possibly, not be walking out. Assessing Hawkins through a world-weary expression that has seen it all several times, Silver weighs his options: hear the boy out or drag him into the kitchen and slice him into the salt pork stew, at least.

Heston's Silver is no buffoon. Instead, he is a dangerous man, not unlike the Deke Thornton character in Sam Peckinpah's `The Wild Bunch'; an intelligent person who is forced to endure, and make use of, the human dregs of his time, the best of whom can hold only a dim candle to him. Cunning, quietly remorseless, always several moves ahead of everyone in sight, yet patient in the face of relentless idiocy, this Silver is also a man whose soul has not been completely flogged out of him, by circumstance or the whip. His sincere respect for the innocent courage of Jim Hawkins gives this `Treasure Island' much of its humanity. If you don't feel a pang as Heston's Long John gazes chagrined at the loot, which, for the lack of more far-sighted colleagues, would have been his, you may have the proverbial hole in your soul. `Ah bucko', says Silver to Jim Hawkins near the film's end, after Jim rebuffs Silver's last gentle attempt to manipulate him, `what a pair we would have made'. Oh yeah, absolutely.

All of the book's heroes are portrayed with heartfelt competence; the blustering Squire Trelawney (Richard Johnson), the tack-sharp, impeccably-mannered Doctor Livesey (Julian Glover), the unflinching Captain Smollet (Clive Wood), and Jim Hawkins' arch-boy (Christian Bale in his mid-teens, filled out a bit post `Empire of the Sun', bearing no resemblance to his homicidal yuppie in `American Psycho'). Arrayed against them are the scurviest sea dogs who ever weighed anchor, complete with terrifying teeth and fierce, implied body odor: Oliver Reed's tragic Billy Bones, Christopher Lee's festering Blind Pew, Israel Hands (what a great name), Silver's murderous, cobra-like shipmate, (Michael Halsey), who provides a taste of what Silver himself may have been like in his younger days, and a most convincing Ben Gunn (Nicholas Amer). Peter Postlethwaite, the super-cool big-game hunter in the first sequel to `Jurassic Park', plays the bewildered George Merry, a man who should always flee from even the slightest ambition; someone who makes you happy to still be you, even if your 401K was riding entirely on Enron.

When the time comes for action, it's delivered with conviction. Early on, the tense, hateful confrontation in the Admiral Benbow inn, between the rum-soaked Billy Bones and his scary former shipmate, Black Dog (John Benfield), is beautifully rendered, as is the berserk fight at the island stockade later in the film. To its great credit, the film never tries to be funny, or even light-hearted. It simply forges ahead, telling Stevenson's great story. But near the end comes a scene in which Squire Trelawney confronts Silver, whose schemes are now hopelessly foiled, and attempts to call the old pirate to account. What briefly transpires is the film's only real yuk, but it's a peach.

It's easy to over-romanticize the period in which `Treasure Island' is set; swashbuckling as it may now seem, it was a time before widespread bathing (the future George III's German fiancé had to be told to please take a bath after arriving in England), flush toilets, anesthesia, toothpaste, germ theory, and any notion of social justice. But it was also a time when unbroken forests still covered most of North America, when Pittsburgh was just a rough-hewn, barely defensible French fort in the midst of a trackless wilderness (near the present site of the Pirates baseball stadium; Pirates?, hmmm), a time when, given the courage, adventurous spirits still had real room to move. The slate was still largely clean. Many irreversible mistakes had yet to be made. Anyone with a taste for history and, perhaps, a discernible distaste for certain aspects of our own `advanced' age will relate well to this forthright `Treasure Island'. If you've appreciated Charlton Heston as a movie star, you'll appreciate him even more as an actor. This `Treasure Island' is probably the best that will ever be made. A more `updated' version could certainly be produced; one that spurts more blood and exchanges more bodily fluids, with much of the book's period style and manner stripped out, but it would no longer be Stevenson, just Hollywood.

In a commentary to the DVD of Treasure Island director Fraser Heston said that the genesis of this film was as a lad he heard Charlton Heston read the story to him. Robert Louis Stevenson's classic is an adventure story that has appealed to know about 15 generations and Fraser got to hear his father read the story playing all the parts with different accents. I'm betting this was the genesis of Charlton Heston's interpretation of Long John Silver. If so this film was about 35 years in the making.

Not to dismiss the Wallace Beery/Jackie Cooper version or the Walt Disney version with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll, but Fraser Heston's version is a darker version. The other two concentrated on the relationship that develops between Silver and the lad Jim Hawkins with Silver as rogue and surrogate father figure to straight arrow Hawkins. This version emphasizes a very ruthless Silver and a much older Hawkins than either Driscoll or Cooper were played by Christian Bale. Young Bale is no kid the adults have to protect, he aids in the fighting and is if not mature very capable.

The other parts of the legendary adventure are filled most capably with seasoned veterans like Oliver Reed as Captain Billy Bones, Richard Johnson as Squire Trelawney, Julian Glover as Dr. Livesey, and Isla Blair as the widow Hawkins. Most important and unforgettable is Christopher Lee as Blind Pew. Most of these people worked with Charlton Heston before so it was a family shoot in every sense of the word.

Charlton Heston's interpretation of Long John Silver is unique and maybe closer to what Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind. But what a treat young Fraser Heston had to see that one man show of Treasure Island his father put on. If only cameras had been rolling.

Most of the comments expressed so far have correctly pointed out this version as the best and, unlike someone's reference to George C Scott's Scrooge, it does actually come directly from the book and not from years of ingrained television adaptations.The reason it is so good is because it echoes correctly the strata of fear that the book is based on. As a child, Jim Hawkins is scared of everyone from the physically hideous Blind Pugh to the men of bloodthirsty reputation - Israel Hands and Blind Pugh and that fear is shown by the pirates in their reverence for Captain Flint and of course, Long John, who commands by reputation alone.In preserving this intact, the whole book and thus, the film, is believable.I know people question some of the language (incorrectly in my view as all those words were spoken by landsmen not natural sailors and were very much in use in that time - the word 'bugger' for example, appears in the diaries of Pepy's hundreds of years earlier).Its easy to say that the film draws influence from early versions but that's inevitable. The Chieftans soundtrack and a very fine cast make it far superior and much more believable. As someone said earlier, you need a proper Silver who can both turn on the charm to convince a young lad but also control a band of cutthroats and Heston achieves that superbly well. You can see clearly how easily intimidated the pirates are because they are uneducated and that's obvious from the exchanges between them and Long John. Postlethwaite is brilliant in these and totally convincing ! Finally, I think someone mentioned a continuity problem earlier.Although having run off, Jim does see a pirate killed, this is only after he has jumped off the jolly boat and run inland.The two aren't connected.He does that for devilment I think and there are other examples of his reckless behaviour elsewhere in the book. What a great story though - the triumph of the stereotypical English gentlemen over the bloodthirsty pirates.I think we all agree on here, this interpretation is spot on !

I read the book about 20 times a week as a kid. I saw every adaptation for the screen. Disney's was crap! Muppet was a joke. Every animated version was dumbed down. Only this one was faithful to the book. Even better, the actors were perfectly cast across the board. Each and every pirate was terrifying. Each and every good guy seemed nice enough until the fights started, at which they were badass!

This movie made me investigate the actors and I was so disappointed that they were all so wonderful in this, but they never had any better roles afterwards.

All actors were great, but the standouts were Julian Glover as Dr. Livesey, Richard Johnson as Squire Trelawney, Clive Wood as Capt. Smollet, and Nicholas Amer as Ben Gunn. Christian Bale, Charlton Heston, and Christopher Lee were fantastic and perfectly cast (surprise, surprise!)

For any kid, whether an actual kid or a kid at heart, let them watch this, rather than every other one (they are, to a one, crappy).