Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – A Movie Review

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I saw this in the movies with a buddy of mine when I was a kid.  It was the first modern western I had seen.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actually were outlaws at the tail end of the Old West.  Played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively, this pair are still holed up in Wyoming in 1898, robbing trains with their “Hole in the Wall Gang.”  But Union Pacific head, E. H. Harriman gets tired of the gang robbing his trains so he hires the best trackers and lawmen in the country to find and kill Butch and Sundance.  The pair are chased across the Southwest until finally cornered by the posse they have to jump off a cliff into a raging torrent to escape.

Figuring out that they’ll never escape Harriman’s men they decide to head down to Bolivia to steal gold from the miners.  They start robbing banks and mine payrolls until finally they stir up so much trouble that the federal troops organize an ambush and at a small town they’re set upon by a large company of police.  And while they are pinned down a military troop arrives complete with a cannon.  The movie ends with the pair wounded and desperate charging out into a fusillade of lead to their apparent deaths.

This is a revisionist western of the type that came out in the sixties and seventies with anti-hero protagonists and questionable morals.  So, if you’re more of a traditionalist this type of movie might not be your cup of tea.  But in my opinion, this is a highly entertaining film.  Newman and Redford are the quintessential bickering friends.  Newman’s Butch comes up with the wild schemes and Redford’s Sundance reluctantly backs him and bails them out with his unbelievable shooting skill.  I recommend it for the action and for the buddy comedy.

The Bounty Trilogy – A Book Review – Part 2 – “Men Against the Sea” & “Pitcairn’s Island”

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In this second part of this book review of the Bounty Trilogy I’ll include both of the remaining stories.  I think this is reasonable because neither of these later “books” has the same narrative clout as “Mutiny on the Bounty.”  Although each story has remarkable human interest and involves harrowing danger and human suffering neither is as dynamic as the tale in Mutiny.  And for this reason, I think I can do justice to both in this single review.

 

Men Against the Sea

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Men Against the Sea is the narrative of Captain Bligh’s Sea voyage.  I’ll let the narrator Thomas Ledward, the Bounty’s Acting Surgeon summarize the voyage, “Never, perhaps, in the history of the sea has a captain performed a feat more remarkable than Mr. Bligh’s, in navigating a small, open, and unarmed boat–but twenty-three feet long, and so heavily laden that she was in constant danger of foundering–from the Friendly Islands to Timor, a distance of three thousand, six hundred miles, through groups of islands inhabited by ferocious savages, and across a vast uncharted ocean. Eighteen of us were huddled on the thwarts as we ran for forty-one days before strong easterly gales, bailing almost continually to keep afloat, and exposed to torrential rains by day and by night.”

And that description gives us the gist of the book.  But as remarkable as that voyage was what’s it like as a story?  I would say that the story is passably interesting and we do get a flavor of each of the passengers and especially Bligh but the circumstances of the story are on the whole too static to make the adventure come fully to life.  For this I don’t fully fault the authors.  I’m not sure anyone could figure out a way to fully document the voyage and still give the story a dynamic feel.  Instead, the book faithfully portrays the oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere that eighteen men trapped on a twenty-three-foot boat for forty-one days must have been like.

Pitcairn’s Island

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Pitcairn’s Island is the story of the Bounty mutineers along with some women and men from Tahiti establishing a colony on a small, secluded and almost unknown island in the South Pacific in order to escape from the British Navy that would be searching for them over the mutiny.  This is a very strange story of how these Englishmen took what was potentially a tropical paradise and turned it into a private hell.  All of the human foibles are on display.  Greed, sloth, lust, intolerance, drunkenness and wrath play a role in destroying the colony.  By the end of the story only the women and children remain except for one mutineer who assumed the role of father figure for the children.

The story is an exciting one full of conflict and human tragedy.  And the pace of the story is much more engaging than Men Against the Sea.  But at points the dialog does seem to be a little stilted.  But this book is much more readable than the previous story.

 

Final Comments

“Men Against the Sea” and “Pitcairn’s Island” aren’t as engaging or have plots that are as well rounded as “Mutiny on the Bounty.”  But I would guess that nine out of ten readers of Mutiny will at least try to read these later stories.  Personally, neither of these later stories was as satisfying as Mutiny but I recommend that anyone who read Mutiny on the Bounty should at least give them a try.

The Bounty Trilogy – A Book Review – Part 1 – Mutiny on the Bounty

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I’ve just finished the first part of the trilogy, Mutiny on the Bounty, and I’m so enthused about that book that I decided not to wait until I have finished all three books to start writing the review.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

I have seen a couple of the film adaptations of Mutiny on the Bounty previously and always enjoyed the story.  So I was impelled recently to hunt out the book to see what I thought of the more detailed treatment in the book and to discover just how closely the movies kept to the original text.

The story of the Bounty is the collision of a melancholy and headstrong Englishman, Fletcher Christian, with a brilliant naval officer, William Bligh, who was at the same time a venal, cruel and boorish man who inflicted brutal floggings on his crew for situations that he himself caused.  He starved his men for the sake of pocketing the savings he made on provisioning the ship and he belittled and accused his officers of petty offenses that he dwelt upon because of his obsessive nature.

The story is told from the point of view of one of the midshipmen, Roger Byam, a young gentleman whom Bligh convinced to join the journey in order to create a dictionary and grammar of the Tahitian language for a mutual friend of theirs Sir Joseph Banks who was the President of the Royal Society.  The mission of the Bounty was to sail to Tahiti and collect hundreds of saplings of the breadfruit tree and then transport the plants to the British West Indies where they might become a cheap food source for the slaves on the sugar plantations there.

The story chronicles the outward voyage to Tahiti and the mission on the island.  We meet all of the more notable members of the crew and several of the Tahitians who are important to the personal stories of the main characters.  Christian, Byam and several other characters become intimately involved with women on the island and this adds to the unhappiness when the return voyage begins.

Bligh and his minions in the crew confiscate the food and other material souvenirs from the men and officers, ostensibly for equal sharing but in reality, for Bligh’s benefit.  And when some of this plunder, a few cocoanuts, are stolen one night by one of the younger crewmen, Bligh accuses Christian of the theft.  This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  At daybreak Christian enlists some of the seamen who had been most afflicted by Bligh’s punishments and they seized muskets from the weapons locker, took Bligh prisoner and took possession of the ship.

Christian and his mutineers formulated a plan.  Bligh and the officers and anyone who wanted to remain loyal to him would be set adrift in the ship’s launch.  The Bounty would be commandeered to take the mutineers to an island where they hoped to avoid discovery by the British Navy.  But in the event, it turned out that there were too many loyalists to fit in the launch.  The excess loyalists, including Byam had to remain with the Bounty and Christian finally decided to make a trip to Tahiti to drop off the loyalists, purchase provisions and convince some Tahitian women and men to join the mutineers in their new home.

Once the Bounty leaves Tahiti the story revolves around the fate of the Byam and his comrades both on Tahiti and later on when a British Navy vessel comes looking for the Bounty.  Contrary to all expectations, Bligh was able to navigate his tiny craft 4,200 miles to Timor in the East Indies.  On finally reaching England he alerted the authorities of the mutiny and a man of war, the Pandora, was sent to the South Sea to find and recover the Bounty and bring the mutineers back for trial.  The loyalists left on Tahiti and some mutineers who decided to stay on Tahiti were all rounded up by the captain of the Pandora and the ship searched among the islands of the south Seas looking, unsuccessfully for the Bounty.  But when the Pandora struck a reef in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia, the surviving crew and prisoners were in a similar situation to what Bligh suffered in travelling thousands of miles in lifeboats to reach port.

Finally, the story reaches its climax in the court martial trial of Byam and his companions.  And here we see circumstances conspiring to paint Byam as a mutineer.  Bligh misunderstood an innocent conversation between Byam and Christian the night before the mutiny and reported it as proof that Byam was part of the mutiny.  But the only one who had heard the whole conversation had disappeared in a ship wreck before the trial.  And so Byam is convicted and sentenced to hang.  By a miraculous coincidence the missing crewman is rescued and gives testimony of Byam’s innocence just a few days before his execution would have occurred.  After the trial Byam returns to naval duty and has a long and illustrious career.  But an epilogue has him return to Tahiti where the paradise that he had experienced there had been destroyed by exposure to the conflicting pressures that European lifestyle put on the natives.  Almost all of his friends were dead of disease or war and the population was reduced to a miserable and sparse remnant of what he remembered.

Mutiny on the Bounty is a fictionalized version of the actual Bounty story.  Although the characters are all based on actual people, I’m sure the authors have injected their own details and personality traits to give the story the desired tone.  It is not a history.  And for that reason, I will rate it as a work of fiction.  I consider it an excellent adventure story.  Being based on actual events the authors strove to convey the extraordinary hardships that the characters suffered while trying to survive the almost impossible conditions of their grueling sea voyages.  And the description of the idyllic world of the Tahitians in this early stage of their introduction to Europeans is remarkably effective in conveying a sense of sheer happiness.  It literally sounds like heaven on earth.  I haven’t read the other two installments of the Bounty Trilogy but I highly recommend the Mutiny on the Bounty story to anyone who enjoys adventure stories.

Improving My Mind

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Watching Joe Biden turn into a mumbling moron with stuffed artichokes for brains has reminded me that for us older folks it’s use it or lose it.  So, I’ve initiated a cultural renaissance right here in Dunwich.  I’ve got three very different reading projects going on.  They are:

 

  1. Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241, by John Haywood
  2. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin, by Søren Kierkegaard
  3. The Bounty Trilogy: The Complete Series: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea & Pitcairn’s Island, by James Norman Hall (Author), Charles Nordhoff (Author)

The Kierkegaard book on “Anxiety” is the most questionable project.  I took some courses in philosophy as an undergraduate and found them to be highly annoying.  They seem to spend so much time and effort splitting hairs that by the end, all of the audience has walked away in boredom.  And they employ so much specialized jargon that the notes for the vocabulary sometimes outweighs the text itself.  But I want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.  He claims he wants to make philosophy more about what we need to do as human beings and less about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  I figure the least I can do is slog through the argument.

The Bounty trilogy is just a book I’ve always meant to read and now have finally gotten around to.  And so far, it’s a good one.  I’m finding that the 1930’s Charles Laughton movie is pretty close to the text.  It’s an exciting adventure story that has the added advantage of having actually happened.  It is a fictionalized account but it is based on the documents left by the protagonists and by their descendants.  Other than the myriad of parts of a sailing ship that I don’t know the names of the book is a fast read.  I’ll have a review of this when I finish.

The Northmen book is something I’ve been interested in learning more about for a while.  I was writing a sci-fi/ fantasy story that used Valhalla as a plot element and I just kept running into aspects of Norse mythology and history that I wasn’t up on.  This book looked to be a way to fill in some gaps and also provide me with some information I’ve always been interested in.  The Scandinavians had a very large impact on several different aspects of European and by extension world history.  I feel like I should know a lot more about their origins before I start introducing them and their culture into my stories.  I’ve just gotten started with the book but already I’ve learned a bit about the origins of the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that I didn’t already know.

As I said yesterday, our whole lives shouldn’t be railing against the progs.  As the ZMan says, a negative identity does not provide a basis for a viable society.  We must pursue the actions and goals that have intrinsic value.  If we are claiming that the Left is trying to destroy our way of life by denying us the opportunity to do things that we value then shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to do these things?  Otherwise, it’s all just cant and posturing.

So, stretch your mind and learn something new.  Then figure a way to make some of it relevant to your life.

Galaxy’s Edge – Dark Victory – A Science Fiction Book Review

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I’ve got to hand it to Anspach and Cole.  The world building they are doing in the Galaxy’s Edge franchise doesn’t seem like it will ever slow down.  They’re at least fifteen books into this universe and I keep running into newer and weirder twists and turns in the history of their galaxy.  And they’re always throwing in new characters and cross-connecting old characters and advancing new plot lines.  These boys are on their game.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

In this latest installment Aeson Ford (/Captain Keel/Wraith/Tyrus Rechs (imposter)) is working undercover for his old Legionnaire friend Chhun.  He gets mixed up with an investigation into Nether Ops interference into the chaotic political situation that has existed since the Legion put an end to the House of Reason.  Working with the Nether Ops agent “Honey” he infiltrates several bases of the nefarious spy agency leading up to the capture of vital intel.  Meanwhile Ford is also in search of information on his own forgotten origins in the Kill Team Ice that stretches back to the Savage Wars by means of cryosleep.

Meanwhile we discover that his crewmate Leenah was not killed when the Indelible VI was attacked by bounty hunters in the last book.  We learn how her ship was all but destroyed just as she made the jump to light speed.  The jump saved her life but left her stranded in the middle of nowhere with almost no air and no way to get help.  Through her mechanical ingenuity she rigs a signal and waits with time running out.  Meanwhile Ford’s other crewmate Garret is Lenah working with Nilo’s Black Leaf mercenaries and because he hasn’t given up on Leenah’s life, he locates her signal and convinces Nilo to go on a rescue mission.

When they get to the beacon Leenah and the ship is gone and Nilo figures out that Leenah has been captured by Gomarii slavers and they go on a mission to save her and take down the Gomarii.  During the rescue Nilo and Garret discover that the Gomarii vessel is actually a Savage hulk that contains information in its memory banks crucial to the upcoming resumption of the Savage threat to the galaxy.

Aeson Ford fabricates a plot to capture a rogue Naval Commander who has been doing the Nether Ops dirty work.  During the action Honey betrays him with her former colleagues in Nether Ops and she is killed along with the rest of the agents that Ford defeats.  When he returns to the Legion base, he learns that his old comrade Masters is in dire straits.  Instead of returning to Garret and Nilo he heads off with the legionnaires to save Masters.  But at the end of the book, we find that Nilo also has business on that same dangerous planet.

Dark Victory winds two plots together and both are done well.  The rescue of Leenah from the salvers is the more dynamic and satisfying of the subplots but taking Ford out of the action allows the secondary characters like Leenah and Garret to get their moments in the sun.  Plus, it allows Nilo and Garret to advance the information on the Savage Wars back story which will tie in with other characters that don’t figure in this book but will return soon.  Let’s face it, once you’re into the series this deep all you want to know is whether it’s still a good read.  It is.

Huzzah!!!! I’m a Gosh Darned Capitalist at Last.

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I finally figured out how to sell stuff at Fine Arts America and I’ve added the link to that button at top that says “Stuff to Buy.”

All this stuff is a pain in the neck but I guess it’s the first step to becoming fabulously wealthy.

Here’s a copy of the link if you’d like to go to my page there and heckle me.

https://fineartamerica.com/art/pho+tog?searchType=artistname

 

Here’s a Sample From My Unfinished Sci-Fi Book

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Here’s a sample of a book I’m currently about a quarter of the way through.  If you look at the Header of the website there’s a new link to “Stuff to Buy.”  That where I’ll embed links to books and photogrpaphy I’ll have to sell soon.

 

 

The American Archipelago

Book 1 – The Sniper

Chapter 1 – An Object Lesson

Joseph Boghadair was set up at a loophole in a small prefabricated metal building at the top of a mountain that contained the Icarus Mine.  His .50 caliber sniper rifle was trained on the narrow road that led up to the mine.  He could see a line of black SUVs about a mile and a half down the road and he was getting ready to start firing on the convoy.  His first shots took out the engine of the lead vehicle thereby halting the convoy.  His second volley took out the engine of the last car in line thus trapping the rest of the vehicles between.  Then at a more leisurely pace he took care of the other eight vehicles.  By this point the passengers were crouching behind their disabled cars and randomly firing handguns and assault weapons in Joseph’s general direction with almost no discernible results.

After about half an hour a few of the men in black body armor attempted to reach a stand of trees about 300 yards away to their left.  Joseph put a few well aimed rounds in front of their path and they quickly retreated back to the supposed safety of their not so mobile autos.  Joseph snorted wryly at their shyness.

An hour after that a helicopter approached the mountain from the opposite direction to Joseph’s loophole.  Walking over to a window on the other wall he could see a distant Blackhawk approaching at relatively high altitude.  Joseph then began his preparations for their reception.

Between crew and troops, the Blackhawk had a dozen men on board.  And more importantly it had a couple of hellfire missiles.  From a very safe distance away it targeted Joseph’s position and fired.  The missile struck precisely on target and obliterated the steel structure almost completely.  All that remained was the foundation of the structure around the mine shaft, now clogged with debris.

The Blackhawk landed about three quarters of a mile from the mine entrance.  At this point the agents hunkered down behind their vehicles began to stream toward the helicopter.  By the time they reached the aircraft the troops had exited and were waiting for their rescued brethren to arrive.

FBI Special Agent in Charge, George Chastain assembled both teams and briefed them on the updated mission plan.  “We will proceed to the mine head and look for any human remains.  We will collect whatever we can retrieve for lab analysis and attempt to seal the mine head until qualified personnel can be assembled for recovery operations.  It is presumed that the target, Joseph Boghadair was killed by the missile strike but we will take no chances.  He was an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached by anyone without backup and prior approval from leadership.  In addition to his war record it is believed that Boghadair is responsible for the shooting deaths of forty-six people in the last six months with thirteen of those people being FBI personnel.  No one enters the mine until remote sensing equipment is brought in.  Alright, proceed.”

The agents formed two groups.  Apparently, SUV agents and helicopter agents must not bond very well.  But before they were more than a hundred feet from the helicopter a series of incredibly powerful explosions shook the ground and knocked them off their feet.  And while they were holding onto the ground for dear life, they could see that the high ground where the mine head was located collapsed into the earth.  The roar of that collapse was more frightening than the initial earthquake and some of the agents hid their heads under their arms in abject terror.  When the mountain stopped shaking the men started to collect themselves and stand up.  When they looked around them, they were astonished.  A circular pit had opened up centered on the mine head.  It was a thousand yards in diameter and so deep that only blackness could be seen at its center.  Several cracks had formed outside the circular pit.  One of these had nearly swallowed the Blackhawk.  It was on its side and half buried in the crevice.  Its rotors were fractured and it wouldn’t be flying away from this landing.

Chastain went over to the edge of the crater and just stared down into the blackness below.  Then he went back to his team and started giving orders to begin a retreat from the stricken mountain.  He was trying to think of what he was going to tell his boss.  Nothing reasonable came to mind.

The Batman (2022) – A Science Fiction – Fantasy Movie Review

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Last night I went to go see the “The Batman” with my two older grandsons.  We hadn’t gone to the movies since before the whole COVID mess and I figured with them on Easter vacation from school it was now or never.  They’d heard good things about the movie.  I was skeptical about it because Batman was being played by Robert Pattinson.  And I remember he’d been the actor in those lame Twilight vampire movies that teenage girls were so excited about a while ago.  But I figured it would still be fun hanging out with these descendants of mine.

So, we met up after their work hours.  These two guys are working on their holiday and doing nine hours a day of manual labor.  I told them I was embarrassed that I never had the work ethic they have at that age.  I drove to the nearest cineplex for the last night of the movie’s run.  But I wasn’t familiar with the town or mall it was in, so I was amazed to see that the mall was almost completely empty.  All the biggest chain stores like Macy’s and Target were vacated and even most of the smaller stores were boarded up.  It felt like we were walking onto the set of a zombie movie.  There were barely a dozen people walking around in the mall at 6:45 at night.  The theater was empty except for the ticket seller, popcorn girl and the ticket taker.  It was pretty creepy.  But they still got their popcorn and drinks.

The plot of the movie revolves around the familiar scenario of Bruce Wayne acting as an avenging angel stalking the streets of Gotham City fighting against organized (and disorganized) crime as the caped crusader.  In this iteration James Gordon is a police lieutenant who has teamed up with Batman to allow the city to benefit from Batman’s vigilante activities.  The current crime spree is a series of high-level city government officials being murdered by the Riddler.  The mayor, police commissioner and district attorney are murdered gruesomely and their killings are videotaped by the Riddler and shared with the public on-line.  The Riddler highlights the corrupt activities of the men he’s murdered and announces that he will be “unmasking” the full depths of the partnership between organized crime and the present city administration.

Batman starts following clues that the Riddler provides specifically for him.  And in the investigation, he meets up with Selena who has her own secret identity as the Catwoman.  They become romantically involved, sort of, and together they discover the link between Batman’s father and the crime boss Carmine Falcone (played ably by John Turturro).  We find out that Falcone is also Selena’s father.   Mixed up in Falcone’s vice trades like drugs and prostitution is Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot also known as the Penguin.  The Penguin ends up shedding light on the origins of Falcone’s control of City Hall.  The details of this old history illuminate the basis for the Riddler’s campaign of vengeance against the city’s power brokers including Bruce Wayne.  By the end of the movie, it’s clear what the Riddler was up to but it isn’t in time to prevent a plot to blow up the sea wall that keeps the river out of Gotham’s downtown.  And it also barely allows the foiling of a massacre at a political rally being held for the reform candidate running for mayor.

Of course, Batman must almost single-handedly prevent thirty, gun wielding acolytes of the Riddler from shooting Gotham’s citizens like they were literally fish in a barrel.  But in doing so he learns that his negative role as a vigilante seeking vengeance is too limited to help save Gotham City.  And that he must become also a positive force to help people survive the mayhem all around them.

So, what did I think?  Well first of all, this movie is almost three hours long.  That’s really long.  And the movie is unrelentingly bleak.  Bruce Wayne in the few scenes when he is not Batman looks almost suicidal.  There are no lighter moments in this movie at all.  There is a grittier and uglier feel to this movie than, for instance, in Nolan’s Dark Knight movies.   On the other hand, the action scenes are very well done.  This Batman apparently has a much more capable armor than the Dark Knight had.  He is blasted by machine guns and even a shot gun and not only survives but doesn’t even show any damage to his suit.  And a chase scene on a crowded expressway is pretty spectacular, even if absurdly unrealistic.  On the negative side, Selena does utter the phrase “white privilege” at one point which annoyed me mightily.  But on the whole the movie is an effective and enjoyable Batman movie.  I recommend it to fans of the genre.

Leaving the theater, we were the only people in the huge mall except for a guard who escorted us to the only door still open in the building.  Our car was the only vehicle in this enormous parking lot and as we walked through the eerily empty space, we reflected on its resemblance to some of the darker corners of Gotham City that we had recently visited.  We spent the long ride home discussing the pros and cons of the film and all decided that it had been a worthwhile expedition.  I got them home an hour later than I had estimated and their parents told me of the unbelievably early hour they had to get up for work the next morning.  I felt awful getting them home so late but the boys still claimed it was worth it.  Score one for nonconsecutive generational male bonding.  Now, bring on the great grandsons.

Anxiety as an Indicator of Engagement in Life

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A very old friend sent me this link.  My family is almost defined by its perpetual state of angst.  So the relevance of this video to my perspective was immediately apparent to me.  But I think it may be interesting to a large cross-section of people in our modern angst-filled world.  Basically Kierkegaard’s theory was that anxiety was a necessary part of life and the way to ensure that it didn’t destroy one’s ability to function was to focus on pursuits that were passionately important so that this passion would sustain someone to the completion of his objectives.

The Master of Ballantrae (1953) – A Movie Review

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Here’s a later installment in Errol Flynn’s catalog of swashbuckling movie roles.  The story is loosely based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel of the same name.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The story is a wild tale with Errol Flynn playing the title role as Jamie Durie, a Scottish noble in the 18th century who goes to war to bring Bonnie Prince Charlie to the throne of Britain.  But when the Stuart pretender is defeated, Durie and an Irish comrade have to flee Scotland leaving Durie’s brother to inherit Ballantrae and possibly Jamie’s fiancée.  During his exile he is hijacked by a treacherous sea captain, captured by pirates and then turns pirate himself before returning to Scotland with a fortune to claim his bride from his supposedly duplicitous brother.  But when his brother saves him from an English hangman’s noose they are reconciled and his fiancée escapes with him for a life of adventure.

This was Flynn’s last feature with Warner Bros. but the story moves along very smartly and he can still swashbuckle with the best of them.  The script was good enough.  I especially liked the pirate sequence.  All of the colorful character actors were way over the top but I think they provided just the right atmosphere for a light-hearted romp of an adventure story.  If you’re looking for an old-fashioned adventure story, this is it.  Errol Flynn makes it work one last time.