Captain Jack
(1998)
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Bob Hoskins stars in this charming high seas adventure as Captain Jack, a tough, aging seaman whose travels are now restricted to ferrying tourists around Whitby Bay. Fed up with his now staid life, Jack to decides to retrace the steps of his hero, Captain Scorseby, who sailed from England to Jan Mayen Island in the Arctic in 1791. Assembling a rag tag crew with absolutely no experience, Captain Jack sets out on a potentially dangerous 1,300 mile voyage, sponsored by a fish & chip house, to place a plaque commemorating Scoresby's voyage on the island. Along the way, the crew get to know each other and the irascible Captain Jack, fend off polar bears, and evade NATO as they try to revive the spirit of a long dead adventurer. |
A very slight but genial seafaring adventure, with Bob Hoskins playing the good captain of the title who, tiring of endless pleasure cruises, decides to re-create the journey of an 18th-century whaler, Captain Scoresby, who sailed from Whitby to the Arctic. He assembles a disparate crew of loners and losers — including bickering sisters Gemma Jones and Anna Massey, Aussie drifter Peter McDonald and shy chip-shop worker Sadie Frost — and together they set off on the adventure of a lifetime. Jack Rosenthal's script lacks the sharpness of his best TV work (Eskimo Day, for instance, featuring wife Maureen Lipman, who also appears here), but the scenery is nice, the performances adept and the direction from Robert Young refreshingly uncynical.