The Bounty

Definitely not a remake of the MGM classic, but a Robert Bolt-scripted meditation on the conflict between Bligh's puritanism and Christian's surrender to Polynesian paganism. The floggings and sadism are thus kept to a minimum, with Hopkins' Bligh emerging less as a hissable villain than as a credibly sympathetic but flawed character. It's all a brave try, though Gibson is perhaps not up to the demands of a Christian's progress from naive rating to self-loathing exile, and Donaldson's direction often verges on the stolid.