Crime Movie Legend Guy Ritchie Made One Of The Worst Romantic Comedies Of All Time

Guy Ritchie came charging onto the filmmaking scene in 1998 with the invigorating British crime flick "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." He followed up this sleeper hit two years later with "Snatch," which, despite an upgrade in name talent (Ritchie got Brad Pitt to play an amusingly indecipherable bare-knuckle boxer), felt a lot like wheel-spinning by an excitingly talented director who was more worried about not succumbing to the dreaded sophomore slump than challenging himself. Sometimes you've got to make a "Kafka" to get to "King of the Hill."

Ritchie took another tack. He fell in love with and married pop music legend Madonna at the end of 2000, and became seemingly obsessed with centering her in his creative endeavors. He directed the diva in the controversial music video for "What It Feels Like for a Girl," and paired her with Clive Owen in his short film "Star" for BMW's "The Hire" series. Ritchie was hardly the first director to go gaga for the leading lady in his life, but he hadn't entirely proved that he belonged in the Hollywood big leagues with elite action filmmakers like Tony Scott and John Woo; really, all he'd done was make the same movie twice and put a ring on Madonna's finger.

For those of us who didn't know what to make of Ritchie (outside of the fact that he was clearly talented and capable of greater things), his third movie was far from expected. That said, it was shot through with the kind of filmmaking hubris that would either elevate him to the A-list as a genre-hopping maestro or, quite possibly, end his career altogether. There didn't seem to be any middle ground here. The result was not favorable to Ritchie.

When Ritchie and Madonna announced they were embarking on a remake of Lina Wertmuller's "Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August," well, I hoped at first that they'd insist on using the full title of the original. After that, I remembered my first and, thus far, only viewing of Wertmuller's critically acclaimed, class-warfare satire, and got excited.

I've been a fiercely devoted Madonna fan since I first saw her music video for "Borderline" on MTV in 1984. For teenage boys, she had a scandalously seductive look that made your mother demand you turn the channel, and she only pushed that sensuality further as her career reached greater heights behind such transformative LPs as "Like a Virgin," "True Blue," and "Like a Prayer." Guys were just as likely to have a mother-maddening poster of Madonna on their bedroom walls as girls; she was as big a pop icon as Michael Jackson and Prince, and she matched their expertise at leveraging her image via music videos.

Like Prince, Madonna was desperate to be a movie star, and she did seem like a cinch for the gig after her incandescent supporting performance in Susan Seidelman's "Desperately Seeking Susan." But rather than attempting to out-smolder the era's erotic thriller queens (e.g. Kathleen Turner, Melanie Griffith, and Renée Soutendijk), Madonna sought out throwback studio comedies like "Shanghai Surprise" and "Who's That Girl?" She didn't want to be Barbara Stanwyck; she was hot to be the next Katharine Hepburn.

Madonna struck out with those first two star vehicles, which led her to hedge her bets by blending into the ensemble of Michael Brooker's 1920s Broadway comedy "Bloodhounds of Broadway." She's good in the film, but the next major test of her star power was on the horizon via her portrayal of gangster moll Breathless Mahoney in Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy." She aced every last inch of that assignment.

From there, Madonna bounced back and forth from supporting performances and star turns. Aside from Alan Parker's solid adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Evita," she fared better in the former. By the time "Swept Away" rolled around (alas, they never so much as hinted they might use the full title), Madonna's stardom was unquestioned, while her movie choices were routinely doubted. Before "Swept Away," she'd delivered possibly the worst performance of her career in John Schlesinger's tone-deaf rom-com "The Next Best Thing." So there was a sense of dread felt by critics and moviegoers heading into Ritchie's audacious remake. But the material was so far afield of what the filmmaker had tackled in his features and shorts that I found myself rooting for him.

This was a very quiet cheering section.

The buzz for Ritchie's "Swept Away" was toxic months before the film screened for critics. The major tabloids, traditionally unbound by the strictures of journalistic ethics (e.g., the truth), declared it DOA the second its distributor, Screen Gems, skipped the last summer film festivals ahead of its release. The final nail in the coffin was the trailer, which correctly sold Madonna's character as a shrill, over-privileged piece of billionaire arm candy, while generating zero laughs from the conflict between Madonna and Adriano Giannini as the ruggedly handsome yacht servant who receives the brunt of her snobbish abuse.

The appeal of "Swept Away" is its plot twist, which finds the snooty, wealthy woman washed up on a deserted island with the shiphand. He is, of course, far more capable of toughing it out in these inhospitable elements, while she possesses no survival skills whatsoever. Wertmuller views the wealthy brat as a contemptuous beast, and gets a good deal of rough comedic mileage out of her proletariat tormenting this suddenly helpless woman. But he falls in love with her, a luxury he cannot afford. She returns to her life, while his is completely destroyed (when his wife learns of the affair).

Ritchie and Madonna go with a downbeat ending, too, but they seek to redeem her character by turning the billionaire husband into the bad guy. He intercepts Giannini's letters, who is pleading for Madonna to run off with him, which seems to be in her heart. Ritchie gets downright sentimental about the whole scenario, and, even though his stars haven't quite set the screen ablaze as lovers, he just about gets away with the heartbreak element thanks to a moving score by the underrated composer Michael Colombier. His music does the kind of emotional heavy lifting that John Barry contributed to Adrian Lyne's "Indecent Proposal," a film that asks you to buy Demi Moore's inherently kind character giving in to Robert Redford's million-dollar come-on.

It doesn't matter. No one went to see "Swept Away." Roger Ebert, who'd given Wertmuller's original a four-star rave in 1974, eviscerated Ritchie's remake with a one-star pan. "This story was about something when Wertmuller directed it," he wrote. "But now it's not about anything at all."

Ebert was the loudest voice in the chorus of critical disapproval that left the film nursing a 6% Tomatometer score. Looking back, I'm surprised to find that The New York Times' perspicacious critic at large, Wesley Morris, gave the film a positive review (while writing for The Boston Globe). Amusingly, I don't really agree with his take, but it's nice to see that the film's strange beauty captivated him, as well. I don't think there will ever be a critical reappraisal of "Swept Away" (/Film's Lyvie Scott considers it Ritchie's nadir), but, at the very least, it's a misfire with heart.