L'Ouragan

HURRICANE is not a great film, but it sure IS entertaining. Some of the scenes and situations are ludicrous (Jason Robards has the hots for his daughter, Mia Farrow) and the dialogue is often hilarious. But if you stick around, you'll find that the production values are astonishing. Among the talents behind the camera are Jan Troell (THE EMIGRANTS, THE NEW LAND), who directed; Sven Nykvist (cinematographer for many of Ingmar Berman's later films) who filmed on location in the South Pacific; and Nino Rota, who wrote a lovely, haunting musical theme. The performances aren't so bad (considering the dialogue) and the special effects at the end show you why this was one of the most expensive films of its day.

I don' understand why most words written about this film have been negative. Just because it is a remake of a film people think is a classic? This version of Hurricane with Jason Robards and Mia Farrow is a very competantly told story with good special effects. I was involved. I was moved from beginning to end. I felt that the characters were a little more credible than in the John Ford film. A very good film but not a popular one. I had to tape it at 3AM.

I have also heard negative feedback about this movie. This is one of the greatest examples of romance in any movie I have ever seen. Only unromantic men usually don't like it, movie critics for one. Luckily I don't base watching a movie on what a critic has to say. I could care less about what they think. Hurricane is a beautiful and moving story of the cost of love and what love can do. The special effects are also excellent as far as they go in 1980 or now. See it and then see the original which is also excellent and moving. Beware young lovers !!!

A peetty awful movie if I'm honest. Mia Farrow in her 30s by this point is still playing the much much younger character, it's a disaster movie but bogged down in a slow and predicable love story, the dialogue is horribly cliched, the music is also dated and so are the miniatures. The pacing is awful in this movie too, it's so unbearably slow and the politics is not interesting. I got so fed up with the drum music and the sheer amount of melodrama was very cheesy. Everything about this just felt so farfetched. This is one film you don't want to watch. In teems of the production design and costumes all of that side was okay, but the film just never came alive for me.

In view of the disaster-movie cycle of the 1970s, somebody got the bright idea of remaking the John Ford classic THE HURRICANE (1937) – lavishing on it a considerable budget, a handful of stars, and the best that special effects wizardry could afford at the time; however, the end result was so dreadful (and old-fashioned) that the film proved a notorious flop!

The setting (adapted from a book by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, best-known for another adventure with an exotic backdrop, "Mutiny On The Bounty") is a South Sea island run by the American Navy; the arrival of the Governor's daughter causes a commotion – the newly-crowned native King forsakes his local girl for the white woman's charms; this obviously creates problems between the two sets of inhabitants, who do not wish to have their blood mingle…but, before the situation can be resolved, the Forces of Nature contrive to mete out their own form of justice (via the titular catastrophe).

Jason Robards Jr. is the Governor, Mia Farrow his daughter, and Dayton Kane the young ruler; besides, Max von Sydow is a doctor, Trevor Howard a priest, Timothy Bottoms a Navy officer (with feelings for Farrow) and James Keach as Kane's hostile keeper (the latter having been convicted of his fiancé's death, who drowned after fleeing a ceremony in which her virginity was to be ascertained!). Despite enviable credentials – producer Dino De Laurentiis, acclaimed Swedish director Troell, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, composer Nino Rota (whose contribution is particularly notable) and production designer Danilo Donati – the film is something of a snoozer, with endless footage devoted to local color and the unconvincing central romance…until the spectacular climax (but which still isn't really enough to redress the balance)!

Having re-acquainted myself with this (I'd already watched it as a kid), I hope someday to get a fresh appraisal of the Oscar-winning original as well; it was available on DVD very early into the format, but hasn't been re-issued since going out-of-print!