Essential
Summary
Jones and company are in fine form in this pure-hearted men’s adventure, with amazing stunts (one of which was later recycled for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and exotic locations, as it was filmed entirely in New Zealand. Seagrove is gorgeous, the violence is full-blooded, and the pace is nonstop fun. There’s nothing holding me back from recommending this whole-heartedly.
Plot: A missionary’s fiancé is kidnapped by pirates, and a rogue pirate comes to the rescue.
Review: Bully Hayes (a fit and athletic Tommy Lee Jones) has a terrible reputation in the South Seas: His mark has been used and abused by his former partner Ben Pease (Max Phipps), and so Bully’s reputation precedes him wherever he goes. On one of his more docile transport missions, Hayes transports a missionary named Nathaniel Williamson (Michael O’Keefe) and his beautiful young bride-to-be Sophie (Jenny Seagrove) to New Zealand where he drops them off safely at a small mission there. Not long after, Pease invades and massacres the village with his team of brigands, leaving Hayes’ sign with relish. He takes Sophie hostage, leaving Nate for dead. When Nate takes pursuit in a foolhardy fashion, he is stranded in the middle of the ocean where he’s miraculously rescued by Hayes and his crew. Because Hayes had a little attraction and a connection with Sophie, he agrees to help Nate track Pease down to Samoa, with the intention to not just get Sophie back, but to get good old fashioned revenge. The adventure takes them deep into the jungle where Sophie has been used as collateral (as a human sacrifice) to obtain access to an island the German Navy needs as a port, and with Pease and a crazed German naval commander in a warship, Hayes and his crew are going to have to get very creative to get Sophie back in one piece, but also to thwart the German Navy.
With a rousing adventure score by Trevor Jones and crackerjack directing by Ferdinand Fairfax, the big-scale epic pirate film Nate and Hayes is one of the unsung, unknown gems of the early 1980’s, completely overlooked and underrated by any sense of the term. I absolutely love this movie with all my heart, and back when it was only available on VHS, I pined for the soundtrack to be released (which seemed like a total impossibility at the time, but has since been released on CD twice). Jones and company are in fine form in this pure-hearted men’s adventure, with amazing stunts (one of which was later recycled for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and exotic locations, as it was filmed entirely in New Zealand. Seagrove is gorgeous, the violence is full-blooded, and the pace is nonstop fun. There’s nothing holding me back from recommending this whole-heartedly.
Kino Lorber has just released a great looking Blu-ray edition of Nate and Hayes, which contains a new HD master from a 4K scan of the 35mm negative. With crystal clear image and sound, the movie has never looked or sounded better. The disc comes with two audio commentaries by two sets of film historians, and has two versions of artwork on the sleeve, plus a slipcover.