Hurricane (1979)

Dino De Laurentiis' epic adventure story features an all-star cast and impressive special effects. Filmed entirely on location on the remote South Seas island of Bora Bora, this is a touching story of the desperate love affair between a young Samoan chief (Dayton Ka'ne) and a beautiful American painter (Mia Farrow), against the will of her father (Jason Robards), the powerful governor of the island. Amid this man-made tension comes a powerful hurricane so devastating, the lives of the lovers and the entire island are imperiled. Sven Nykvist's brilliant cinematography showcases both the beautiful island splendor and the catastrophic destruction of Hurricane. Product Description

Hurricane

Charlotte (Mia Farrow) travels to a Samoan island to visit her father, the governor (Jason Robards). Before long she falls in love with the beautiful native chief Matangi (gorgeous Dayton Ka'ne). Their romance is not popular. The story moves slowly and there's not much more I can tell without giving away plot points that occur more than halfway into the movie. And this is the movie's main problem. The adventure part of the movie doesn't start after well over an hour. Director Jan Troell has never been known to make fast paced movies, and this time the script is working against him. It takes a very long time before the story really takes off and by then many viewers will already have lost their interest. The location shots are beautiful and the hurricane scenes are spectacular. These help it up to a very weak three star rating.

The DVD is presented in 1:78 widescreen (from 2:20 original). The 2 hour movie is divided into only 10 chapters. There are no special features except a trailer. October 27, 2008

A love story on a faraway island in the South Seas

De Laurentis must have spent an enormous amount of money to make this movie which is a remake of the 1930s version. I didn't get to see the first version but when the film hit the cinemas in 1978, I was in my early 20s and it was quite remarkable with what they can do with special effects. A typical love story, I'd say. Mia Farrow playing the role of Charlotte Bruckner a beautiful painter from Boston who was visiting his hard-headed-dictator father Captain Bruckner (Jason Robards) who was govenor of Pago Pago. She meets Matangi (Dayton Ka'ne) a high chief of Alava and both of them were instantly attracted to each other. They remain inseparable onwards. Three-quarters into the film, Captain Bruckner sentenced Matangi to life imprisionment for a crime he did not commit but the latter managed to escaped to be reunited with Charlotte. They finally became an item at the end of the movie after the devatasting hurricane died down. Simple love story but amazing special effects. I think the credit should go to Dayton Ka'ne for his performance. He was only 23 when he starred alongside Mia Farrow who was 43 then. Farrow went on to make several more movies but Dayton made just another, in 1981, entitled Beyond the Reef. Nobody knows what happened to Dayton after that. August 26, 2008

Dicussion of the product, movie quality

At last the movie was issued on The widescreen DVD format. But what you see? The colours of the "Hurricane" are very contrast and blue-oriented instead of the cinema version that I have seen before. I was really wandered why is it so? And still didnt received the answeres on this questions! the quality are not original and the colours are very poor. Any way the film is great but this DVD version is not good! I hope that there will be another remastered version of this movie by Paramount in the future, of course in widescreen. August 8, 2008

Ok but I liked the 30's version better.

This was the 70's remake of the classic 30's version of this south seas tale of love, cruelty, and how one bad hurricane tops all the human drama.
I wanted to see this remake as I had never seen it before. The story line has been changed and not for the better Im afraid. I thought being in color would make it more interesting, but without the over the top acting in the first one-this remake is just bland. Its funny- but the hurricane effects in this remake are not as good as in the old 30's version. July 29, 2008

THERE'S MORE THAN JUST A BIG WIND A-BLOWIN' IN THIS BAD MOVIE DELIGHT!

The '70s were an embarrassment of riches for afficionados of Bad Movies We Love. Every time you turned around, there was another hilarious bomb coming your way under the uncannily accurate heading "disaster movie": EARTHQUAKE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE SWARM, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, AVALANCHE and four AIRPORT movies, to name just a few. Ever wonder if any of them would have been better if they'd been made by more talented filmmakers? No? Well, leave it to Bad Movie maestro Dino De Laurentiis --the man behind ORCA, MANDINGO and KING KONG LIVES -- to think anyone was actually waiting for, say, Roman Polanski to tackle one of these claptrap extravaganzas. When Polanski, scheduled to direct HURRICANE, had to leave L.A. forever on rather short notice, De Laurentiis replaced him with one of Sweden's most prestigious names, Jan Troell, who had scored crossover art-house hits with the relentlessly realistic THE EMIGRANTS and its equally earthbound sequel THE NEW LAND. Never mind that he and Sweden's great cinematographer Sven Nykvist were hardly the most appropriate duo for a storm-and-smut epic; none of the subtle textures of mood they achieved are able to compromise the essential swill of the forbidden-love-between-white-girl-and-native-boy nonsense, which was already as old as the islands when Dorothy Lamour first filmed it back in 1937.

The giggles begin just as soon as virtuous flapper Mia Farrow gets an eyeful of hunky Daytone Ka'ne, the former protege of her military martinent father, Jason Robards Jr. Since Ka'ne has been named king of his island, we're soon watching him do his tribe's traditional, Chippendales-like bump 'n' grind, while outfitted in a feathered headdress and puka-shell harness that Cher would kill for. His every shimmy drives Farrow mad with lust; the director gives us closeups of her hand gripping a chair so tightly her knuckles turn white! Robards, meanwhile, is throwing such hammy, overdrawn "incestuous" glances at daughter Farrow that you may think you're watching silent movie footage. But thank heaven there's crazed dialogue to keep you laughing out loud. At one point, Robards greets Farrow in the morning by practically panting, "I couldn't sleep -- your dreams kept me awake." Troell plays this hokum straight, making it all the funnier: after Farrow and Ka'ne make love next to a lagoon, a heavenly choir swells on the soundtrack.

Robards tosses Ka'ne in the clink -- for wanton heathenism, or something -- and, to get him freed, Farrow slips into Robards's bedroom to seduce him. "I'll be as close as you want," she vamps. But her father tells her no -- not because he doesn't want to, but because she's using him. Thus, Farrow is forced to break her beloved out of jail, making the two of them the Bonnie and Clyde of Bora Bora. As often happens, their passion unleashes a hurricane that destroys everyone who's tried to keep them apart, plus a few extras. Troell strives once agaian for reality, so the eponymous storm we want to see goes by in one long blur.

In the words of the island's priest, Trevor Howard, "If foolishness was a mortal sin, hell would have been full long ago" -- yes, and a producer like De Laurentiis would have been struck down dead at this film's release. July 20, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...