StudioCanal 4K Ultra HD Film Review

Cutthroat Island (1995) • 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [StudioCanal]

A female pirate and her companion race against their rivals to find a hidden island that contains treasure.

Officially the biggest box office disaster of all time, it’s tempting to approach Cutthroat Island with optimism. Maybe mid-1990s audiences just weren’t ready for a pirate movie revival, so there’s hope it may be ripe for reappraisal like another disaster from the same year — Waterworld (1995) — which has been somewhat rehabilitated by more forgiving audiences in recent times. Alas, Cutthroat Island has only worsened with age, now we’re a couple of decades on from Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) discovering the key to success was mixing the supernatural with a swashbuckling adventure.

The story of how Cutthroat Island flopped is more interesting and entertaining than the film itself, but for what it’s worth the story follows 17th-century female pirate Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) on a quest to find the titular treasure island. To do this, she must combine three pieces of a map her father…