Hawkeye Reviews: Pirate Radio
What an absurd notion for a politician to attempt to ban a radio station simply because he doesn’t like the music selection. Imagine someone trying to pull that off today. They’d be laughed out of office. This is, in part, the focus of Richard Curtis’s “Pirate Radio,” which tells the story of a daring group of people simply trying to play the music that they enjoy (and which obviously a good deal of British citizens do as well).
It is the year 1966, a revolutionary year in music, and yet radio stations play less than 45 minutes of pop music a day. A group of DJs take it upon themselves to broadcast rock and roll music 24/7 from a boat anchored in the North Sea where they are outside the jurisdiction of the law. They call themselves “Radio Rock.” Included in this group are The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an American, Gavin (Rhys Ifans), a popular announcer who came out of retirement, and Quentin (Bill Nighy), who owns the boat.
Recently come on board is Carl (Tom Sturridge), a young man who was sent there by his mother to stay with Quentin, his godfather, for awhile. After awhile, he is thought of as part of the crew, and goes through a relationship with one of the visitors on the ship. Meanwhile, a very uptight politician named Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) goes about trying to get them off the air with the help of his henchman, Twatt (Jack Davenport), and yes, that seriously is the character’s name. Quite fitting, don’t you think?
“Pirate Radio” is one of those films that feels like it had the best of intentions but just couldn’t follow through on them. This is an interesting scenario, but trapping almost all of the main characters on this boat gives them very little to do when they are not broadcasting. They try to fill time by having the crew get into relationships with some people visiting the ship including Quentin’s niece, whom Carl takes an immediate liking to.
Another relationship involves another crewmember, Simon (Chris O’Dowd), getting married to a woman who, as it turns out, only wanted to marry someone to be able to live on the ship on be close to Gavin. These relationships are never explored very far and are not given very much time to develop. If the filmmakers really wanted to make this the main off-air activity for the crew, you would think they would give them a little more time.
One of the best things about this film is its soundtrack. Every few minutes we get treated to another great classic blasting from their radio station. These actually help the film move along at a fairly decent pace, but are not really enough to carry the movie on its own. It ends up feeling like the entire point of the movie was to simply have an excuse to play all of these classic hits on the soundtrack.
During the film, it randomly switches back to Branagh’s character trying everything he can to shut down the radio station. This was another part of the film that could have easily been expanded upon. He obviously doesn’t like the music, claiming that it’s immoral and only listened to by immoral people, but his motivations are never made clear beyond that, nor are Twatt’s. Their endeavors end up leading them to a puny excuse to attempt a shutdown of the station, showing just how desperate they were.
The last half hour or so of the film begins to pick up as the characters find themselves faced with a life-or-death situation, not only in that they are going to be hunted down by the law, but also in that their lives are in real jeopardy. Here, the true spirit of the film begins to show itself, but it has taken quite a long time to finally get to this point. Not that we weren’t seeing some of this spirit in the broadcasting sessions, just not nearly enough.
The actors certainly look like they are having a fun time, in particular Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, and Rhys Ifans. It is a great cast and the perfect one for a group of oddballs such as this. If only the script had been able to match the caliber of the acting, there might have been a really special film here. That’s why it becomes such a shame that the script ends up leaving them adrift at sea. Oh well, at least they have some great tunes to listen to.
2.5/4 stars.
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