Audience Member
When I found this movie on VHS I was SO happy!!! I LOVE when I find movies I've never heard of before so I couldn't wait to get home & watch it.After watching it I see why I've never heard of it before.Robert Duvall & his 2 goons reminded me of the characters in The Ladykillers Even though Robert Duvalls Caspary was a psychotic nutjob, there are times where you can't help but almost laugh at him.His character is just way over the top.The movie is OK watching it once but after watching it once, I don't think it's something you'll ever watch again.The good thing about The Lightship is I never knew what a lightship was till I watched The Lightship
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
laughably awful. only people who like soap operas would be hooked
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/19/23
Full Review
jamie t
THE LIGHTSHIP is another entry in the "foreign filmmaker goes Hollywood" cycle, mitigated slightly by the fact that director Jerzy Skolimowski had worked in British cinema for about 15 years prior to this, and this film was apparently shot in the waters near Germany (it's meant to take place off Cape Hatteras)...but it nonetheless fits into the mold of these films frequently being pretentious duds. Not that THE LIGHTSHIP is without its flashes of interest, but for the most part it feels like a self-conscious attempt at profundity, made memorable largely by an intriguing central performance from Robert Duvall.
Duvall, as the criminal Calvin Caspary, affects a strange Southern accent which sounds a bit like Fats Waller mixed with a member of the New England upper crust; Caspary frequently discourses on the nature of human evil and nature, and while his ramblings are occasionally interesting, it's Duvall's eccentricity that puts them over. Duvall seems to realize how pretentious the film is, and goes over-the-top in response; his strange energy and inflections are a bit puzzling, but it's still a pretty good performance overall.
Certainly it outshines anything else in the film. Klaus Maria Brandauer is a good actor, but here, as the haunted Capt. Miller, he fades into the background most of the time, given little to work with by the script; his big monologue, which basically rips off the USS Indianapolis monologue from JAWS, is flatly written, and even more flatly delivered. Caspary frequently refers to Miller as some kind of remarkable man, but there's no evidence for it here. Michael Lyndon, as Miller's "rebellious" son, has no presence to speak of, and his narration (which is almost totally unnecessary) is delivered without any verve. That Lyndon was Skolimowski's son is not surprising, as nepotism seems to be the only real explanation for his casting.
If Lyndon is too bland, William Forsythe, as Caspary's thuggish companion Eugene, is embarrassingly hammy. Forsythe plays Eugene as an utter lout, which could work if he wasn't also played as a laughably overgrown infant. Gobbling down ice cream and reading comic books, Eugene is a farcical moron, one who could be used well in a comedy, but here cannot be taken seriously. Arliss Howard, as Eugene's brother Eddie, is actually decent, managing a bit of weary menace, but it hardly matters here. Badja Djola is stuck with the worst conceived role as Nate, an African-American cook who owns a pet crow (!) named Frederick Douglass Bird (!!); in one particularly bizarre scene, after Forsythe has killed the bird, he imitates the bird's talk-screech of "Love Nate" and scrapes a knife across a ventilation shaft to torment Forsythe, who cannot tell what is going on or who is aggravating him. No one else makes much impression.
Set as it is on a lightship (a ship that serves as a floating lighthouse), the film should be bursting with claustrophobic tension. But Skolimowski's direction never comes to life (it feels like a TV film), and the meandering pace and plotting hamstrings any attempt at tension. The film was based on a novel by Siegfried Lenz, which may have had more depth than the screenplay by William Mai and David Taylor. The film has little discernible structure, the characters, aside from Caspary, are one-dimensional, and if the film was meant as a parable, I cannot really tell what for; as a fable, it is too muddled to be engaging. The ending of the film is particularly botched, with what should be an act of tragic sacrifice that comes off as a pointless death, followed by another slab of murky soliloquizing by Lyndon.
The technical aspects of the film are solid but unremarkable. Production designer Holger Gross had a good vintage lightship to work with, and it is as believable a set as one could ask for. Charly Steinberger's cinematography is passable, but lacks imagination. Stanley Myers' music is baffling; the film is meant to be set circa 1955, but the music frequently delves into 80s synth-crap that dates it badly. Hans Zimmer apparently composed the electronic music; compared with his later work, this is one of his least distinguished scores.
THE LIGHTSHIP won a Special Jury Prize and a award for Duvall at the Venice Film Festival, against what competition I do not know. It seems to have come too late for the "prestige release" cycle as regards this kind of film, and a bit early for the modern art-house style of release which might have made a bigger success of it. But however it was received in its day, it has not help up well, and must be accounted an interesting failure.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A decent film to watch. It has its flaws, but it also has some great scenes in it.
It is an obscure film that not many people have seen. Good performances by some of the actors, not so good by the actor who plays the son (Micheal Lyndon), and it sounds like his voice was dubbed by someone else.
Film was actually shot on a real lightship which was restored for the movie.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/19/23
Full Review
Audience Member
As a psychological thriller, The Lightship has its tense entertainment moments, but the narrative line takes so many detours that the problem is trying to figure out the non sequiturs as they surface out of nowhere.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Got a more than a hint of the "Key Largo" about it, but not so claustraphic. This was certainly not a remake of the earlier film, but I got the impression it was inspired by it. Duval and Brandauer played off each other well, as the two characters trying to keep their respective factions on leash. I thought the Captain's secret from the war was hardly surprising, perhaps though audiences now know more about the subject, and it would seem his son was a bit too much of 1980s teenager, than a 1950s one. Obviously when measured against the mark made by Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson in "Key Largo", this falls short, nevertheless it's very good value for the three and half stars I've given it.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/15/23
Full Review
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