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Reap the Wild Wind

Play trailer Poster for Reap the Wild Wind 1942 2h 4m Adventure Play Trailer Watchlist
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80% Tomatometer 10 Reviews 56% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Along the seaboard of the American South during the 1840s, cut-throat salvagers who profit from the wrecks of transatlantic cargo ships move from exploiting shipwrecks to causing them. As the most dangerous of the salvagers, King Cutler (Raymond Massey), takes aim at the ships of the wealthy Devereaux Company, ambitious ship captain Jack Stuart (John Wayne) and company lawyer Stephen Tolliver (Ray Milland) vie for the hand of feisty Loxi Claiborne (Paulette Goddard).

Critics Reviews

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THR Staff The Hollywood Reporter 03/20/2019
The show, on a grand DeMille scale, is technically magnificent and will earn many times its cost at the nation's box offices. Go to Full Review
Tony Sloman Radio Times 03/19/2020
3/5
The beginning and end are spectacular -- Cecil B DeMille proving yet again that, even as a director, he was a great producer -- but this maritime vessel does get very watery amidships. Go to Full Review
Matt Brunson Film Frenzy 09/23/2019
3.5/4
The film's most interesting element is seeing Wayne cast in a role with unexpectedly dark shadings, a far cry from the spotless heroes he played during this period but a hint at the complex characters he would later essay in The Searchers and Red River. Go to Full Review
Elena de la Torre Cine-Mundial 09/16/2019
One of the greatest and most extraordinary movies we have admired from DeMille. [Full Review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com 05/09/2007
B-
DeMille's epic spectacle has a preposterous plot but the undersea effects are good and so is the acting; it's hard to believe but Ray Milland was then a bigger name than John Wayne, who gets second billing. Susan Hayward is billed below Paulette Godard. Go to Full Review
Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews 10/05/2005
C+
Tepid hokum adventure tale from Cecil B. De Mille. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Jerry E @engelbach 07/30/2024 DeMille was Hollywood’s most overrated director. His potboiler epics were shallow ego trips. Compared with the great directors of his era, he was just a swaggering poseur. For all his pretension about spectacle, his films were static and claustrophobic. This film is pure hokum, long, silly, and boring. See more ocedummy L @Ocedummy 07/10/2023 Very good old time sailing/criminal story. Good guys are excellent and the baddies hit the nail on the head. And the love angle is engaging. Not quite as good as The Wake of the Red Witch, but close enough. See more John R 04/03/2023 For practical effects, it's hard to beat DeMille. Everything he made was the height of practical effects, set design and art direction for the era. So this movie certainly can't be faulted on those counts. I found the story to be a little odd. Paulette Goddard's character was clearly not interested in Ray Milland's for the entire movie, but the plot functioned in such a way that the viewer was basically led to the conclusion she didn't know what she herself wanted. I was surprised at the final shots, but the impression I have is that the original audience probably wouldn't have been. It was interesting to see a Wayne character that was as morally compromised as this one. In most of his cowboy movies, he's unquestionably the good guy, but here he's self-centered and double crossing. He plays it well though. All in all, a good time and there's just something old-timey magical about watching it on VHS. Makes me feel like a kid again. See more andy f 07/02/2020 A Cecil B DeMille masterpiece. Its hard to pick holes in this masterpiece that is sophisticated, thrilling, funny and romantic. A work of art and Hollywood excess. See more lanfranco c @Lanfrancobz 08/28/2018 Sometime JW is a bad boy ! See more 08/02/2015 A Wonderfully Romantic Adventure set at sea See more Read all reviews
Reap the Wild Wind

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Movie Info

Synopsis Along the seaboard of the American South during the 1840s, cut-throat salvagers who profit from the wrecks of transatlantic cargo ships move from exploiting shipwrecks to causing them. As the most dangerous of the salvagers, King Cutler (Raymond Massey), takes aim at the ships of the wealthy Devereaux Company, ambitious ship captain Jack Stuart (John Wayne) and company lawyer Stephen Tolliver (Ray Milland) vie for the hand of feisty Loxi Claiborne (Paulette Goddard).
Director
Cecil B. DeMille
Producer
Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter
Alan Le May, Charles Bennett, Jesse Lasky Jr.
Production Co
Paramount
Genre
Adventure
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Feb 10, 2017
Runtime
2h 4m