Swept Away Reviews

A remake of the 1974 Italian film directed by Lina Wertmuller, Swept Away follows a spoiled wealthy woman Amber (Madonna) and a Communist fisherman Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini) who go from spending days on a fancy yacht to being stranded on a Mediterranean island. While there, Giuseppe decides to gain authority and enslave Amber, because he’s tired of her berating him. I think one of the biggest issues I have with the movie is Amber, who’s too bitter and irredeemably nasty. In fact, she’s so awful that any attempt to faithfully capture the comedic tension and beauty of Wertmuller’s film comes off as unbelievably forced. Apart from Madonna’s overacting, Guy Ritchie’s take on Swept Away makes a wide series of dumb changes that ruin the chemistry of the original. In the 1974 version, Gennarino and Raffaella find a frigate in the distance, so they fight over the whistle for rescue, showing the first signs of them working off each other; later they find the island and row toward it, working together for the first time. In the remake, Amber and Giuseppe find a flare gun, fight over it before punching a hole in the raft, and they get washed away on the island. Also, in the original, after an attempted rape by Gennarino, Raffaella looks away into the bed of kelp reflecting on her decisions and, after watching Gennarino hunting, skinning and cooking a hare, she inevitably gives herself to him, hoping it would satisfy the merciless man; therefore the two engage in sexual relations later that night. In the remake, Amber looks into the campfire, watching her material world crumble, and the next day she drops the logs, kisses Giuseppe’s legs and they have sex. By making these changes, Guy Ritchie makes one of the worst remakes of all time, evaporating any levity or human connection that made Lina Wertmuller’s film funny and powerful.

(1/2 Octopus out of 5)

Even though this movie has a terrible reputation, since I always had a weak spot for Guy Ritchie’s work, I was still eager to check it out. What was he thinking though?!? 10 years after, we are still wondering... I mean, after directing 2 of the most acclaimed British features ever put on the silver screen, Guy Ritchie pretty much managed to sabotage his once so promising career. Some say he has made a come-back with 'RocknRolla' but, personally, I still think he has lost his touch but who knows? He might make something amazing again in the future. To be honest, I do think that the hatred against this movie is actually a little bit exaggerated. I mean, of course, it is completely misguided, really weak, rather boring and pretty much uninteresting but I have seen way worse. From a technical point of view, the whole thing looked pretty good and I don't think Madonna is such a bad actress. I mean, you might find her annoying in this flick, but she pretty much played herself so it is not as if she needed some major acting skills to pull it off. Still, it remains a wreckage and a massive blunder career-wise, absolutely no doubt about it.

"Swept Away" is clearly nothing more than a vanity project for Madonna in order to get her then-husband Guy Ritchie to direct her in a movie. While I haven't seen the 1974 original that it was based on, I can tell is a thousand times better than the film we got on the big screen. This feels muddled, the leads have zero chemistry together, and since it took in just under $600,000 (against its $10 million budget), this pretty much tells that Madonna's movie career is basically over. Sure, she's had a bunch of bad movie projects before that ("Shanghai Surprise", "Who's That Girl", "Bloodhounds of Broadway", "Body of Evidence", "The Next Best Thing) but "Swept Away" clearly takes the cake for being Madonna's worst film ever, and it's no wonder why she stopped acting after this disaster to continue what she does best: her music. And after that fiasco, she and Guy Ritchie would eventually divorce a few years later. It's best that everyone just don't watch "Swept Away", and listen to either Madonna's recordings or watch a better Guy Ritchie flick instead ("Snatch").