Review of The Sea Wolf

The Sea Wolf (1993 TV Movie)
7/10
The only way you can beat Larsen is by staying alive
17 January 2012
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** Fairly good remake of the Jack London classic "The Sea Wolf" with Charles Bronson as the crazed and power hungry Captain Wolf Larsen the most brutal skipper on the high seas. Larson who's obsession with the power and strength of the individual, which he prides himself in, comes from his reading of the Superman theories of human evolution from the writings the German philosopher Frederick Nietzchche. As things soon turn out Larsen is confronted with a true Superman, or the actor who plays him in the movies, Christopher Reeves as the well refined and cultured theater critic and writer Humphrey Van Weyden. It's Van Weyden who ended up on Captin Larsen's schooner "Ghost" after surviving together with pick pocket expert Flaxen Brewster,Catherine Mary Stewart, an accident at sea. It was Flaxen and her pop Reggie, Peter Hayworth,who lifted Humphrey's wallet just before the ferry, the Martinez, that they were on hit a rock and sunk with all aboard.

Getting a job on the "Ghost" as a lowly cabin boy "Hump" as Capt. Larsen calls Van Weyden soon sees what a brutal and sadistic water rat he is in treating his crew. It's later when "Hump" gets a bit friendly with the Captain that he realizes that his obsession with power comes from his unhappy childhood that he in fact never had. It's during those tender years that young "Wolfie" was never given a chance to express himself intellectually by him not getting a proper education. This forced Larsen to got out to sea at age 12 to support himself. With his will of iron Capt. Lawsen over the years educated himself to the point that would qualify him to be a professor in some half dozen subjects in both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

It's later that "Hump" discovers that the Captain is slowly losing his eyesight, probably due to a previous fractured skull accident, and the fact that his crew finds that out would mean curtains for him. In them finally raising up against Captain Larsen and throwing him out to sea as shark bait. This makes Captain Larsen more and more unstable which finally leads to a real mutiny where he in fact ends up, without a lifeboat, at sea. But with his superhuman strength and determination Larsen survives to exact bloody vengeance against those who dared to oppose him.

***SPOILERS*** While all this is going on both "Hump" and Flaxen checked out on a lifeboat only to end up back in Larson's "Ghost", now a ghost ship, that by then was abandoned and left to sink by it's crew an almost totally blind Captain Larsen helplessly chained to it. It's there that we have the climatic confrontation or the "maine event" between Captain Larsen and "Hump" Van Weyden in who in fact of the two is the real Superman in the movie. The humanistic and felling for his fellow man "Hump" or the brutal and ruthless in treating all those who don't live up to his high Nietzchche like standards of life Captain Wolf Larsen.
2 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed