Curaçao (1993)

Wonderful Movie

Dreadfully Boring

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Steven Guerin is a disgraced fed working a dead-end security job on the beautiful south Caribbean island of Curaçao when suddenly things go a bit crazy. A friend confesses his part in a terrible crime which is now catching up with him, a dangerous South African spy offers him a suspicious job, and a beautiful colleague/lover from his past arrives to complicate matters. What's the right thing to do ?This glossy and enjoyable made-for-cable film is a stylish modern version of glamorous forties classics like To Have And Have Not or The Glass Key, all sultry dames, put-upon heroes, sneaky plot machinations and idyllic scenery. The Dutch Antilles setting of Curaçao is fabulous, with its lush tropical backdrops, steamy groves, sudden downpours, Venetian stylings and carnival atmosphere - it pretty much has erotic thriller stamped all over it. As too does Petersen, who burns through the Bogart/Cagney lead, smouldering intensity, speaking quietly, piercing the other actors with thoughtful stares. Scott has an interesting part as the cowardly bartender Wettering, the lynch-pin of the story, but is unusually ordinary and lumbers himself with a slightly lame accent. However, there is excellent support from Carmen (In The Mouth Of Madness) as the career-comes-first agent, Sayle (Gorky Park) as the nasty apartheid Boss, and Anglim (Haunted Summer) as the world-weary flatfoot. The whole thing is polished off with pleasing photography by Ellery Ryan and a good clattering spy story revolving around a purloined ship's manifest. A fine cable movie by Schultz, who's made some other interesting stuff (The Seventh Sign, To Walk With Lions). Scripted by James D. Buchanan, from his book The Prince Of Malta. The UK TV print has the rather insipid alternative title, Deadly Currents.

It is is very sad to see someone of the calibre of George C Scott in a low budget thriller which would have been better if the original novel was written by Graham Greene and directed by someone somewhat more experienced in the genre. NOT TO MENTION A BETTER CINEMATOGRAPHER. There are so many missed opportunities with the scenery and carnival merely glossed over, rather than captured to locate the movie solidly in the exotic setting of the novel.Elsewhere in the viewer comments on this site, one very astute observer complained about the variety of diabolically bad accents in this film. Ever since I saw George C Scott as Rochester in Jane Eyre, I have prayed for him NEVER to ever accept again a role which required him to assume a British accent. Just every now and then, he could just possibly pass for British or a very British sounding South African played obviously by an American actor. I can stomach Meryl Streep's extraordinarily laboured accents (both British and Australian) - at least she gets it right even though with every utterance, she demands that we marvel at her skill. Well, I am sorry that Mr. Scott is no Meryl Streep, and it just destroys the illusion - like having Michele Yeoh speak excruciating Mandarin with a strong Singaporean accent in Crouching Tiger etc.Peterson acts no differently than what we see on CSI. Except he is still very handsome and more or less slim in this movie. He is the Harrison Ford of TV. Same old expressions for every emotion, every situation. No on second thought, Ford has two - perplexed/pained and happy. I have never seen a smile on Mr. CSI!

What is wrong with CURACAO ( Also known as DEADLY CURRENTS though what the reasonn for the name change is I have no idea ) can probably be summed up where a woman says to her lover :" Keep it down baby , I'm trying to sleep " It's not the dialogue that's the problem or the way it's delivered , it's the fact the actress has has a Central European accent . Nothing wrong with that until it's revealed her character is from Philidelphia in the United States ! This what struck me about this thriller while watching it - The way accents don't match their characters . Apart from the Philly woman with a German accent we see a South African with an English accent , a local police chief who sounds like he's an Irishman impersonating a Gestapo officer and worst of all George C Scott playing someone who's either Dutch or British with an accent that sounds like it might be American tinged with South African . You soon give up following what's on screen and end up concentrating on what nationality a character might be due to the strange way they speak . It's interesting to note that this site hasn't given this movie a country of origin . With so many different actors from different countries you do feel that this was produced by the United Nations Even if you're not curious about accents or dialects you'll probably have to give up following the action anyway because CURACAO is plot less . Things happen like a boat exploding , and a hostage situation and the hero being recruited as an agent for South African intelligence but you're left scratching your head wondering what the heck this is all leading to . I was lost

I have just watched "Curacao"on cable and I found it quite reasonable for late night watching. It has nice exotic locations and quite a number of really mysterious characters. The storyline was at least as good as most of the crime investigation stories that William Peterson is in now that he is older. In some way which I can not really explain it reminded me of a Humphrey Bogart film, maybe with Alexei Sayle in the Sydney Greenstreet role. Re the character named Rose, played by Trish van Devere, I think that Stephen Geurin (William Petersen) called the secretary "Rose" when he went in to his office in the embassy near the beginning of the film.