Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight) (1966) – A Movie Review

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I’ve been looking for a good print of this movie for a few years.  Orson Welles made this in his later years when money for his productions was very hard to find.  So, he allied himself with a Spanish production company.  The movie didn’t make any money and the prints of the film weren’t preserved well.  But at last, I was able to see a good copy.

The story is a pasting together of sections of three of Shakespeare’s plays (Henry IV – Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V) that deal with Prince Hal and Falstaff.  Welles was able to assemble a cast that did justice to the work.  Welles plays Falstaff and was born for the part.  John Gielgud is King Henry IV and Jeanne Moreau plays Doll Tearsheet.  Ralph Richardson performs narration.  The rest of the cast I’m not familiar with but I will say they acquit themselves admirably especially Keith Baxter, the actor playing Prince Hal.

This is Shakespeare, not modern cinema so not all audiences will enjoy it.  But for those who have a liking for the Bard this motion picture will reward your time.  It’s a very human tale of a young man (Prince Hal) rebelling against his place in the world.  And at the same time, it is the story of a larger-than-life character, Falstaff.  A man that combines wit, braggadocio, cowardice, humor, lust for life and villainy in almost equal proportions.

Technically there are some aspects of the film that aren’t up to modern standards.  The audio track isn’t perfect.  But for the most part it’s an engaging production.  Even the battle scene which was made on a very small budget is a cinematic success and enhances the film.

I need to buy a good copy of this film.  I can see watching this one about every six months or so.  Recommended for the lover of Shakespeare.

Seven Samurai (1954) – A Movie Review

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Seven Samurai is arguably, director Akira Kurosawa’s most successful work.  It takes place in Japan in 1586 and tells the story of a peasant village that knows the local bandit army is going to rob them of their rice harvest in a few weeks.  They hatch the plan of hiring samurai to defend them from the bandits.

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

They’re rebuffed by several samurai who feel that it is beneath their dignity to work for peasants.  Finally, they come upon a samurai who is in the act of saving a child from a thief who has taken him hostage.  The samurai named Kambei Shimada (played by Takashi Shimura) shaves his own head to disguise himself as a monk then during a ruse to get food to the child throws himself at the thief and overpowers and kills him.

After hearing the peasants’ plight, Shimada agrees to take on their war but insists he’ll need at least six more samurai to accomplish the feat.  The next section of the movie is the assembling of the team.  Each of the samurai chosen has distinctive characteristics.  One is an old comrade of Shimada’s (Shichirōji).  Another is a preternaturally skilled swordsman (Kyūzō).  Still another is a skilled archer and master strategist (Gorōbei).  One is a nobleman’s son (Katsushirō) trying to become a samurai.  Another (Heihachi) is a mediocre swordsman but has so much spirit that he becomes the glue that gives the team cohesion.  And finally, there is Kikuchiyo (played by Toshiro Mifune).  He was pretending to be a samurai but his story was laughably false.  The group mocks him and tells him to get lost but he trails them and eventually is accepted as a sort of mascot.  Eventually he shows his worth by the way he can control and organize the farmers into a defense force for the war.  Eventually the story comes out that he is an orphan of a peasant family that was murdered by bandits.

Shimada and Gorōbei lay out the plan for the defense of the town.  They order the peasants to build defensive fences out of timber and to flood some of the perimeter fields.  They also destroy some bridges that span the local river.  Shichirōji, Katsushirō and especially Kikuchiyo drill the peasants in the use of home-made bamboo spears and the tactics they’ll need to support the samurai in their defense against the bandits’ cavalry charges.

After catching a few scouts that show up on their perimeter a sortie is sent out against a fort that the bandits have about twenty miles from the town.  The raid is a success.  The bandit’s fort is burned down but Heihachi is struck by a musket shot and killed.

The next day the bandits attack in force.  For two days the samurai and their peasant troops steadily whittle down the bandits’ numbers through dividing up the cavalry charges and attacking the outnumbered stragglers.  But during one attack Gorōbei is killed.

Finally, the last day of the battle dawns and it is pouring rain.  The samurai let all the bandits into the town for a final pitched battle.  And the village forces are winning the day.  But the bandit chief hides out in the women’s building in the center of town with a musket.  He shoots down Kyūzō.  Kikuchiyo runs toward the building to revenge him.  The chief shoots him in the belly but Kikuchiyo manages to stab the chief to death before he also dies.  And the battle ends with all the bandits dead.

The next day while the villagers rejoice in their victory, Shimada, Shichirōji and Katsushirō walk past the graves of their fallen comrades and reflect that the victory was a pyrrhic one for them.  The real winners were the farmers whose lives can now go on undisturbed by bandits or samurai.

I’ve left out some subplots involving a love story between Katsushirō and a farmer’s daughter named Shino.  There’s also a farmer whose wife was kidnapped by the bandits and turned into a concubine who runs back into a burning building to avoid the wrath of her husband.  And a village elder who rather than abandoning his building to the bandits is killed along with his son and daughter in law.  But these are window dressing.  The story is the war and it is well told.  Now let’s get down to cases.  This is a three and a half hour, black and white movie in Japanese with subtitles.  Those things right there will be disqualifications for a very large subset of Americans.  But if you do not automatically reject such a film then I’m happy to say that “Seven Samurai” is quite a good adventure story.  Kurosawa based the concept of this film on American westerns.  This was black hat outlaws versus farmers and some white hat cowboys.  Think of the Earps versus the Clantons.  In fact, the story was remade as a western called the “Magnificent Seven.”  Of course, each of us has a limit on just how wide our comfort zone is for exotic stories but in my opinion Seven Samurai is well worth the trouble of some of the oddities.  The whining peasants are a little annoying and the pacing at some stages is on the slow side.  But I’ll highly recommend this movie for fans of adventure stories.

The Giant Behemoth (1959) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Lately I’ve been adding in a spoiler alert to these reviews to spare people who don’t want the movie spoiled by my review of the plot.  I’ll skip it here because no one can care what the plot of this movie is.  Basically, this is a British copycat of the movie “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” which came out in 1953.  Unfortunately, the special effects (such as they are) are even less impressive than the earlier incarnation of the story.

Intrepid American scientist Steve Karnes is in Britain to warn his fellow scientists that all of the atomic bomb blasts have filled the ocean with radioactive plankton, fish and sea birds.  And that eventually this would lead to giant mutated prehistoric creatures being awakened and attacking coastal cities.  Well, he didn’t actually say that but I could read between the lines.

Sure enough a fisherman and his surprisingly pretty blonde daughter are returning from a fishing trip and while she returns to their home the old man lingers on the beach and is blasted by the eponymous giant behemoth.  Apparently, the creature not only is highly radioactive but he also possesses the ability to use his electric eel-like power as if he were a gigantic bug zapper.  Later on, the daughter and her not too smart boyfriend find the father.  He’s covered with radiation burns on his face and they arrive just in time for him to tell them that it was a “giant behemoth” before he expires.

And I say that the boyfriend is not too smart because near the dead fisherman he finds a blob of pulsating glowing, pulsating slime.  So naturally he puts his hand into it and gets his own set of radiation burns.  At this point Steve Karnes and his British sidekick Professor James Bickford show up and quickly figure out that a giant prehistoric sea creature has been turned into a radioactive death trap and they bring in the British Navy.

Unfortunately, the Navy proves incompetent and various naval vessels, merchant ships, helicopters and even a passenger ferry are destroyed by the beast (mostly off-camera).  But finally, when the beast climbs onto land in London, we get to see it.  It’s a sorry looking Claymation facsimile of a sauropod.  And the animation of it walking through the London streets is almost comically bad.  It chases after a lot of not too nimble Londoners for a long time.  It zaps a bunch of people with its death ray.  It knocks some bricks out of a wall onto some other Brits and finally picks up a guy in a car in its mouth and throws it to the ground.

After this goes on for way too long Karnes and Bickford decide that what radioactivity can create, radioactivity can destroy!  They will take a radium spearhead and use a torpedo to shoot it into the creature’s head.  Apparently, this will kill it.  So, Steve gets into a crappy little submarine and voila, he shoots the behemoth and it’s all over.

But just as our heroes are congratulating each other for a job well done we hear a newscast saying that dead fish are washing up on the east coast of the United States.  Oh no, here we go again!

You’ve got to be a devotee of old monster movies to want to see this clunker.  I know War Pig is in that category so if you’re out there, this one’s for you.

Absence of Malice (1981) – A Movie Review

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Absence of Malice is a film that explores the way federal law enforcement and the media can conspire to libel individuals they want to harass.

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

Paul Newman is Mike Gallagher a liquor wholesaler in Miami.  He’s also the son of a former bootlegger.  And because of his social connections through his father the Justice Department is intent on having him provide evidence on a murder case that they are convinced was a mob hit.

Prosecutor Elliot Rosen conspires to convince newspaper reporter Megan Carter (played by Sally Field) that the FBI has evidence that Gallagher was responsible for the murder.  She publishes a front-page story to that effect and Mike’s life starts falling apart.  The longshoreman’s union boycotts his business because the murdered man was a member of their union.  Then Mike finds himself followed around by organized crime henchmen who fear he will turn on them.

Mike goes to Megan’s office and demands to know who told her that he was a murderer.  She refuses on the grounds that it’s privileged information.  But she’s interested in Mike and begins an odd relationship with him.  She meets a friend of Mike’s named Teresa Perrone who can vouch for the fact that Mike was out of town with her when the murder occurred.  While checking on Teresa’s story she discovers that Teresa was out of town to have an abortion.  And Teresa is a practicing Catholic and works for the Catholic Church so the abortion is a source of great shame to her.

Megan’s boss convinces her to include the abortion as part of the story that she writes on Mike.  Reading the story, Teresa commits suicide out of the shame she feels for the abortion being revealed.  Mike is enraged at the betrayal that Megan committed against Teresa and when Megan comes to apologize, he roughs her up.  She gives Elliot Rosen’s name to Mike to atone for her betrayal.

Using the information that Megan gave him Mike begins a deception of his own.  He contacts Rosen’s boss District Attorney James Quinn and convinces him that if Quinn gives a public exoneration of him then Mike will provide him with all the information on the mob hit.  But when Rosen sees what’s going on he assumes Quinn has been bribed by Mike and begins an unauthorized and illegal investigation of both of them.  Mike feeds this false narrative by making anonymous donations to a charity that Rosen knows is affiliated with Quinn.

Finally, a friend of Megan’s in the FBI warns her to stay away from Mike because of an impending arrest of Quinn and Mike.  She then publishes a story of the false narrative and the Justice Department steps in.  Assistant Attorney General James Wells in charge of organized crime (played masterfully by Wilford Brimley) convenes an interview at which all the principals (Mike, Megan, Rosen and Quinn) are present and sorts through the mess.  He figures out that Mike has orchestrated this public relations disaster for both the government and the newspaper as revenge for their unscrupulous use of misinformation to libel him and try to force him to become a government informant.

Rosen and Quinn lose their jobs, Megan’s paper has to print an apology and retraction and Megan is chastened for her bad judgement.  At the end of the movie Mike and Megan meet and somewhat reconcile before he leaves Florida for some new stage in his life.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie.  Above and beyond the topicality to our time of FBI/Media collusion, the characterization of Mike as the wronged citizen strikes a very sympathetic chord that Newman pulls off perfectly.  This movie is almost unique in Hollywood history in not making the crusading reporters and G-men heroes.  Here the FBI are the bad guys harassing the little guy who is just trying to live his life.  The newspaper reporters are shown to be callous and without empathy for their subjects.  This is an excellent movie for our time.

Ride the High Country (1962) – A Movie Review

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“Ride the High Country” was a 1960s revisionist Western directed by Sam Peckinpah.  It stars Joel McCrea as Steve Judd an over the hill lawman who is taking on a job to guard a gold shipment from a mining town called Hornitos in the Sierra Nevada.  Judd hires his old partner Gil Westrum, played by Randolph Scott, and a young cowboy named Heck Longtree to help him guard the gold on the trip.

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

Along the way to Hornitos, they stay over at a farmhouse owned by Joshua Knudsen.  And we meet his daughter Elsa, played by a very young Mariette Hartley, who wants to run away from home to marry one of the miners in Hornitos named Billy Hammond against her father’s will.  After the men head out Elsa catches up to them and Judd allows her to ride with them out of concern that she might be attacked by wild animals in the wilderness.  Along the way we see Longtree flirting with Elsa.  But we also learn that Westrum and Longtree plan to steal the gold from Judd.

When they reach Hornitos, Elsa meets up with Billy and the rest of the Hammond brothers.  To say the least they are depraved animals.  Billy marries Elsa in the town bordello with the madame and prostitutes as bridal party.  When Billy passes out before the honeymoon two of the brothers attempt to rape her in the “bridal suite.”  Judd and Longtree hear her screams and rescue her from the Hammonds.  When Billy demands his wife back Westrum threatens the judge who married them to force him to claim that the marriage was illegitimate.

They leave Hornitos with Elsa in tow to bring her back to her father.  The next night Westrum and Longtree attempt to sneak out of camp at night with the gold.  But Judd catches them and takes them prisoner.  He binds their hands and declares that he will hand them over to the law when he delivers the gold.

The next day Billy Hammond and his brothers catch up with Judd and demand to have Elsa back.  Judd agrees to allow Longtree to have a gun and between them they kill two of the Hammonds.  The other Hammonds ride off and Judd and the rest of the company stop for the night.  Westrum escapes on horseback and returns to the scene of the gun battle and retrieves a pistol from one of the dead Hammonds.  Then he begins to follow Judd’s party.

When Judd and Longtree reach Elsa’s home they find her father dead on the ground and come under fire from the Hammonds who have set up an ambush.  Longtree is shot in the leg and Judd is hit in the belly.  But before the Hammonds can finish them off Westrum rides into the scene and tells Judd that he’s returned to help his old partner face off against the Hammonds.  A classic gun duel, with both sides walking toward each ensues and the three Hammonds riddle Judd with bullets but the two old lawmen manage to kill their three enemies in the fight.

Judd tells Westrum that he’s going to die but doesn’t want Longtree and Elsa to see him expire.  He tells Westrum to finish up the gold delivery and also says that he is satisfied that Westrum has come back to his duty and will do the right thing.  Then he dies and Westrum joins Longtree and Elsa to tend to Longtree’s wounds and finish the job.

Although this is supposed to be a modern Western with a blurred boundary between the good guys and the bad, for the most part McCrea and Scott are very close to the quintessential golden age cowboys.  Scott’s turn as a bad guy is shown to be not very deep seated as he comes back at the end to risk his life for his old friend.  There is a lot more realism in the depiction of how depraved the folks in the mining camp were as compared to a classic western.  But for the most part this film still stays pretty close to a classic western.  I’ll say that I quite enjoyed the movie and I recommend it for fans of traditional westerns.  It’s about halfway between the movies made in the ‘30s and ‘40s and the stuff you might see in the spaghetti westerns that Clint Eastwood starred in.

Jurassic World Dominion – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I brought my two oldest grandsons to see the new Jurassic Park movie, “Jurassic World Dominion.” Based on the previous outings we all expected the movie to be full of exciting, frenetic action and very deficient in plot. But we plunked down our ducats and endured the half hour of coming attractions.

Well, they threw everything including the kitchen sink into this potboiler. They brought back Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill to reprise their characters from the original Jurassic Park film. They had some ridiculous plot about a cloned girl who was produced by parthenogenesis (virgin birth) by the granddaughter of Richard Attenborough’s character John Hammond from the first movie. Then they added an evil corporation producing giant locusts to eat up the world’s food supply to corner the market on genetically modified crops.

Then there were intrigues and kidnappings. There was Chris Pratt lassoing dinosaurs in the snow of Montana and other equally absurd scenarios. Finally, all of the good characters, old and new, band together to defeat the evil corporation and as a capstone the same small dinosaurs that ate Wayne Knight’s character Dennis Nedry in the original Jurassic Park, eat the evil CEO in this movie. What could be better than that?

Well, the movie was a hot mess. But dinosaurs are chasing people and even eating a few so what else could I ask from a Jurassic Park sequel? Afterwards, over some burgers and fries we agreed that it was ridiculous but highly satisfactory for our needs on this family movie outing.

But if someone is looking for an intelligent summer movie this is not that movie. It’s strictly an exercise in summer blockbuster sequel abuse. Well at least they must be finished with Goldblum, Dern and Neill. That at least is something.

Nick Cole Talks About Becoming An Indie Author

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Nick Cole is one half of the writing team that has produces the highly successful (and highly entertaining) military science fiction series “Galaxy’s Edge.”

Nick talks about starting out as an indie writer and his run in with the big publishers.  After his initial success as an indie, the New York publishers gave him a contract but as soon as something in his next story offended their woke sensibilities they gave him an ultimatum; take it out of the story or lose his contract.  He chose the latter and has never looked back since.

There was some very good information on holding onto an audience once the first book in a series appears.  Unfortunately, the strategy he recommends is writing several books before publishing them.  This way they can be released at one month increments to keep the audience stocked in sequels when they are most receptive to purchasing another book.  Considering my slow progress it’s pretty discouraging to think I’ll have to finish three books before I can get publish anything.  Ah well.

It’s about an hour long so it might be a little much for most people.  But if you’re a fledging author it might be worth your while.

 

 

 

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.