Swept Away

Review by Clint Morris

By now, you'll all have heard about Swept Away - most notably because of the bashing it's received from critics right round the globe.

Not only has it been branded the worst film ever, but also in some countries - most notably England - the one-time promising project is not going to cinemas at all, instead headed straight for the video store.

A sure sign of a disaster if anything is. But the question still remains… Is Swept Away really as bad as the critics think?

In one word: Yes.

A remake of a director Lina Wertmuller's 1974 film of the same name, Swept teams, for the first time, husband and wife Madonna - she of material girl fame - and Guy Ritchie - he of credible gangster pics like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

For the most part, it's a tragic love story, but typical of Ritchie he's decided to through in a few unforseen elements - most notably vulgarity, hostility and lingering shots of human flesh.

Miss Amber (Madonna) is a wealthy New Yorker travelling on a ritzy Mediterranean yacht with her husband and friends. She's married to a heartless capitalist; so many presume she's as cold as icy Heineken too.

The focus of her indignation is Giuseppe (Giannini), a fisherman forced to bow to Amber's every need, simply because she has the power to do so.

A short series of circumstances has the pair washed away to a deserted island, where they begin to bicker, bitch, slap, tickle and ultimately give in to their desires.

Swept Away is deserving of its critical backlash and more. In essence, it's a very dreary film with nothing even remotely interesting about it. Funnily enough, it shares a parallel theme to the Harrison Ford/Anne Heche clunker Six Days, Seven Nights, and derisorily the latter film succeeds significantly better.

I presume Ritchie wanted to give us a scorching, credible romance, where we could almost smell the perspire dripping from the screen. Unfortunately, his wife is the wrong person to be dripping it...

She eludes as much charm and vigour as a beheaded goat. Additionally, her male companion has little to do either. In some respects, it looks like he's turned up for one of Madonna's video clips, forced to sashay around in a loincloth and emit blasphemy in his first tongue.

Swept Away is a major blow to both Madonna and Guy Ritchie's careers.

One hopes they simply did the movie as a ploy to spend more precious time together, and really do have some better material left in them - otherwise we've just lost two of pop culture's most influential artists to the township of patchiness.

1 out of 5

Swept Away
Australian release: Thursday November 28
Cast: Madonna, Adriano Giannini, Bruce Greenwood, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Patrizio Rispo, David Thornton, Michael Beattie, Elizabeth Banks.
Director: Guy Ritchie.
Website: Click here

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