Metacritic reviews

This is a superb blending of direction, photography and special effects artistry.

Watching the film now, it seems like a bit of an anachronism. The story may be set in 1789, but the style and tone of the film is pure 1962. They simply don't make films like this anymore.

Has its ups and downs. Bronislau Kaper has provided a highly chromatic musical score that is consistent with the size, the sweeping romance and the eventual lumpishness of this film.

It's obvious that director Milestone could not control Brando for a moment and that the famous, sometimes brilliant actor directed himself. His is one of the most impossible performances in screen history, infecting Harris, who plays a sort of seagoing Iago and is equally hammy and unbelievable.

This three-hour 1962 remake of the Charles Laughton-Clark Gable MGM classic (1935) was the first production in which Marlon Brando really ran amok, with various delays causing the budget to skyrocket. Hardly anyone was pleased with the results.

Brando rocks the boat with his dodgy accent and lowers the tone as history gets rewritten as vanity project.

Brando makes a total mess of his English accent, the romantic interlude in Tahiti goes on endlessly, and the visuals (perhaps the main point of interest in the movie) too often resort to travelogue vistas and picture postcard lighting.