Directed by Richard Curtis, Pirate Radio details the rise and fall of illegal offshore Rock radio stations in 1960’s Great Britain by focusing of the evens on the ship Radio Rock. Here's the trailer. Though the story is based on true events like the exaggerated typical bad-guy government’s attempts to shut the station down, the film also combines the protagonist’s search for love and his long-lost father. When Carl (Tom Sturridge) is kicked out of boarding school, his “mum” sends him to live with his godfather, Quentin (played by Bill Nighy) on board his radio ship, thinking that a few months at sea will straighten him out. About halfway through the film, after having seen how promiscuous and unprincipled the men aboard the ship are (no girls allowed, except for the lesbian cook), Carl finally finds out that the real reason he’s on board is to find his real father. He finally figures out who his father is, but then offshore radio finally becomes illegal. Lead by The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the gang refuses to shut the operation down, and as a result, when their engine explodes and the ship begins to sink, their SOS cries fall on deaf governmental ears. Lucky for Radio Rock, their loyal listeners come in droves in all sorts of nautical equipment to save them not minutes before the boat becomes completely submerged.
The film’s best characteristics are that it’s nice to look at and listen to. The soundtrack includes The Beach Boys, Procol Harum, The Who, Cream, and many other classics from the early days of Rock n’ Roll that are perfectly matched (if not cheesily so) to the events unfolding on screen. The film does an excellent job with costuming and set design, and perhaps the second-most striking scenes of the film (more on the first later) are when the women arrive to the ship via tugboat for their bi-weekly visits. Sporting the bright colors and patterns and progressive shapes of 1960’s fame, the women shout and jump and wave in excitement at seeing the group of legendary DJs, but the most representative figure of 1960’s fashion is Carl’s mother, who arrives alone in a high collared houndstooth trench coat and oversized sunglasses and stuns every man on board. The most impressive scene in the film is by far when Carl goes down into the ship to save his stoner father, Bob “the dawn treader” Silver. Bob refuses to leave without his records, and an underwater tug of war between father and son ensues, with some of rock’s most famous albums floating around the cabin as Carl tries to save what he’s only just found.
What the film earns in aesthetics, sound, and it’s witty british one-liner script, it loses in its montages and over-the-top bad guys. Pirate Radio could be divided into three parts: events on board, events on shore, and montages. The scenes featured in these montages make them look more like music videos and have little to do with plot. Their appearance at the opening and closing of the film makes sense to me, but their frequent punctuation of the storyline seems to simply increase the movie’s run time. In addition, the government officials in charge of shutting down the radio staion, the Prime Minister and his assistant, Twatt (played by Jack Davenport, who deserves an award for the highest number of evil, British antagonists ever played) are so overly dedicated to their cause that any humor that could be found in their dialogue is destroyed.
Pirate Radio is a classical Hollywood film set out in the water during the 60’s. Its plot is, for the most part, predictable, and its attempts at suspense and seriousness are undermined by the DJs’ “stick it to the man” attitude, but the film is still funny and entertaining. The plot was less complex than I had anticipated but its clear cut face off between rock n’ roll and the system makes it easy to sympathize with and adore the characters.
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