Swept Away (2002)

Really Surprised!

Excellent, a Must See

Am I Missing Something?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

First of all, I think MADONNA CAN ACT and to a good standard. Most of the films she has chosen to act in have not been the best scripts, but Madonna has done a decent job in each one of them, being sincere, natural and cute. Except this one. And i think I know what the problem is. Even I admit that Madonnas acting was not good in this one. And not just Madonnas. All people in this movie came across as amateur actors. But i think it is unfair to blame Madonna for it or for all of it. Actors always depend on the director and script writer. Has not anyone ever noticed how even A-list Hollywood actors at least in 50% of their films do a job that is mediocre and everyone has at least few films that are embarrassing? If the director is a visionary, had good rapport with the actors, has chosen the right actors etc, they do a stellar job.But with a different, mediocre, limited-minded director the same famous actors do a crappy job. It happens to everyone, but for some reason only Madonna gets ridiculed for it. But lets take another pop star, Justin Timberlake who also has done a number of acting jobs. In my opinion, most of the roles Timberlake has done are embarrassing and have amateurish quality. But somehow it has gone unnoticed. Because Timberlake is a man, perhaps? Double standards?I think the reason this movie went totally wrong for Madonna was that the director was her husband Guy Richie. In the history of film, it never has given any good results, being directed by or co-acting with your own husband or wife (or g friend/b friend). Most of such movies, involving famous actors have fallen flat.Like the movie Jennifer Lopez and Ben Afflek did together. Or Eyes Wide Shut (Kidman and Cruise). Etc. For some reason it does not work. Perhaps it is too close to home and off-work relationships get on the way. I think Madonna actually was a right sort of person for that role and I also liked the Giuseppe actor, they had good chemistry - but were badly scripted and directed. The original films remake with Madonna in title role would have been very interesting with a right director. Perhaps even Lina Wertmüller herself, she would have pulled the right "notes" out of the leading actors.But I understand why Madonna wanted to make this movie. Unfortunately, it seems her husband did not take it seriously at all and directed it in a typical British dude style, making a joke out of an interesting material. Madonna might be this, that and third, but so are most of famous people. But for some reason people simply love ridicule her for her acting. She had only one floppy acting job, so stop bashing her!

This notorious film was released 13 years ago and only tonight do I finally get around to watching it. The extremely bad box office earnings and the scathing reviews made it a curiosity item I felt compelled to check out. It lived up to it's reputation.Madonna does okay in the beginning as the rich and annoyingly mean woman, but her later transformation into a devoted and humble lover to the Italian sailor, wasn't convincing at all. Her performance was basically a cardboard effort and she didn't fit into the character very well. I just kept seeing her as Madonna stranded on an island with a guy and trying to act for the camera.The scene where she pretends she can't sing and dance is laughable. And how convenient is that finding a small house on a deserted island and later on a full liquor bottle that was strangely not discovered earlier on!The film does have some good qualities though, such as the beautiful scenery, but that's not enough to carry a film. The scenes on the ship seemed to go better than the ones on the island, but that's only by a small margin. Madonna's arrogant meanness on the boat got so irritating after awhile that you can't help, but wonder why she wasn't tossed overboard at the start. Everyone on that cruise, even her own husband, it seems, regarded her as an annoyance to travel with. Understandable considering all she does is complain and hurl insults.Her later romance with Giuseppe doesn't improve things. The whole love affair plays out like a corny and badly acted "Harlequin" romance film and after the ending credits role, you can't help, but feel like you just wasted your time watching it. No wonder this did so poorly at theatres. It's the type of movie where the audience will feel 'ripped off' for paying to see it. I think this movie had potential, but it misfired instead. Beautiful scenery though.

It was not like any other Guy Ritchie movies, or even not like normal movies. It was more like porno made by some Japanese male chauvinistic perverts. This movie's point was distracted from criticizing capitalism's contradictions, which I guess this film wanted to talk about in the first place, by some sex dilemma expressed violently by ignorant sailor-hero. As saying more about the content(because everyone knows their acting was awful), this film's underlying criticism was not gentle, or sharp, but it was just revengeful. there was nothing but I-am-poor-but-happy sailor who wants to rape spoiled rich woman as I sought class in this film desperately. This poor quality of this film may have two excuses: either lack of talent of all staffs of this movie, or fragments of painful life in capitalism society which probably made Guy Ritchie crave vendetta by making this unhappy movie or by another way. I don't know what's to blame, but this movie is poor for sure.

Swept Away (2002) * (out of 4) Guy Richie's remake of the 1974 classic has Madonna playing the rich woman who finds herself on a deserted island with a poor Italian farmer (Adriano Giannini) who decides to turn the tables and teach her what it really means to be a worker. SWEPT AWAY got killed by the critics and often times I think critic and fans are too harsh on remakes. It seems that most of the time the remake is just beaten to death simply because it dared to remake a great film. This here is in no way, shape or form better than the original. We can just throw that out right now and there's no question that there's not a single thing here better than the previous film. With that out of the way, there's also no question that we're left with a really bad movie. It seems a lot of people want to blame Madonna for the film's disastrous quality but she only deserves part of the blame. The majority has to go to her then husband Richie who doesn't do anything right here. Everything feels rushed. The movie has no laughs or romance. Nothing that happens is believable. The entire picture just has a rather cheap feel to it. There's nothing here that works in regards to the technical stuff. The only thing that saves this from being a complete bomb is the performance by Giannini who is the son of the actor who played the same part in the original. He's certainly not as good as daddy but I thought he was very much watchable and at least gave it his all. The performance would have been greatly used in a better movie but sadly everything around him is just bad. This includes the performance by Madonna. Who knows why she even thought she could do anything with this role but she's not believable when she's being the mean rich woman and she's not believable in any form that this character changes into. The two just don't have any chemistry together but a lot of the blame here can go towards the director and screenplay. There's some nice visuals but a monkey could put a camera in a beautiful location and it would still look great. SWEPT AWAY is a really bad movie but at the same time it's bad enough to where fans of bad movies should at least get a kick out of it.