The Bounty

Name: The Bounty
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, History, Romance
Released: May 4, 1984
Duration: 132 min
Rating: 62
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Bernard Hill, Daniel Day-Lewis, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier

1984

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Ratings

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The Bounty

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Movie Details & Credits

Orion Pictures | Release Date: May 4, 1984 | PG

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Bernard Hill, Daniel Day-Lewis, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier, Liam Neeson, Mel Gibson, Phil Davis, Tevaite Vernette, Wi Kuki Kaa

Summary: Fed up with their captain's harsh discipline, a sailing ship crew decides to take action.

Director: Roger Donaldson

Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Drama, History, Romance

Rating: PG

Runtime: 132 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Roger Ebert

The Bounty is a great adventure, a lush romance, and a good movie. Read full review

Jay Scott

The picture is slightly too long, there are some special effects (especially during a storm at sea) that don't come off, and Vangelis's electronic moans on the soundtrack are sporadically anachronistic, but The Bounty is otherwise a spectacularly sustained piece of epic filmmaking. [04 May 1984]

Staff (Not Credited)

The Bounty is an intelligent, firstrate, revisionist telling of the famous tale of Fletcher Christian's mutiny against Captain Bligh. Particularly distinguished by a sensational, and startlingly human, performance by Anthony Hopkins as Bligh, heretofore one of history's most one-dimensional villains. Read full review

Pauline Kael

Based on a script condensed from Robert Bolt's scripts for two projected films about the 1789 mutiny, this misshapen movie doesn't work as an epic -- it doesn't have the scope or the emotional surge of epic storytelling. It's certainly not boring, though.

Empire Ian Nathan

Film is elegant but never beautiful, a pretence at Lean’s magnificence contradicted by a lavish but anachronistic score by Vangelis. It is the words and performances which excite; their director is out of his depth. Read full review

David Ansen

Though The Bounty is almost willfully perverse in thwarting audience expectations, and though it ends anticlimactically, you can't dismiss it. You know you've seen something. A spell, however faint, has been cast, like the one the island casts on the Bounty's crew. [14 May 1984, p.81]

Vincent Canby

The movie seems to have been planned, written, acted, shot and edited by people who were constantly being overruled by other people. It's totally lifeless. Read full review

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User Reviews

DawdlingPoet

Nov 25, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is quite a sobering watch, with Sir Anthony Hopkins playing the strict, no-nonsense (read cruel) lieutenant Bligh. This film benefits from a decent cast, including (other than Sir Anthony Hopkins as Bligh), Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian (a typical womaniser type), Laurence Olivier as Admiral Hood, Daniel Day-Lewis as Fryer and Liam Neeson as Churchill (not Winston, its the wrong century for that, for one thing!). I found some scenes a little uncomfortable to watch, due to the way the natives were regarded, a fair bit of ignorance on show. There's the hypocricy of Bligh claiming to know for a fact that such exotic natives are cannibals (which is ironic given Hopkins went on to portray Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs) and scenes featuring torture, with bloody violence depicted. I imagine it doesn't shy away from the cruel times the crew would have had to endure. Hopkins performance really makes this film quite good - the other cast members do alright but his is the stand out performance in my mind. This is a decent film and so I'd recommend it on that basis. Its not one of the better films I've ever seen but its certainly a decent, reasonably solid watch regardless.… Expand

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