Cutthroat Island(1995)

SHORT VERSION:
Shaw locates Cutthroat Island thanks to the two pieces of the map he and Morgan hold, but shortly after Morgan has him mark it down on a chart, Scully leads a mutiny against her and sets her and her loyal crew members adrift at sea. Shaw soon jumps overboard and swims after them. In the morning, Morgan and her crew make it to Cutthroat Island, but they discover that Dawg’s ship, the Reaper, is there as well, thanks to Scully allying with Dawg and providing him with the island’s location. Shaw also makes it to the island, and he steals Dawg’s map piece showing where the treasure is while he sleeps that night, which Morgan and company witness. The next morning, Morgan and her crew catch up to Shaw, and they decide to work together to find the treasure, which Morgan and Shaw find deep within a cave inside of a cliff. Unfortunately, Dawg and his men appear not long afterwards, and after they seize the crew, Morgan and Shaw fall off the cliff into the sea to escape him.

Shaw survives and is found by Reed, who takes him to a beach where he claims Morgan is waiting. The beach turns out to be occupied not just by Dawg and Scully and their men, but also their new ally Governor Ainslee and his soldiers, thanks to Reed sending out the island’s coordinates to Ainslee via carrier pigeon. The treasure and Shaw are taken onto the Reaper, and Ainslee and some of his soldiers decide to return to Port Royal aboard it. Morgan’s men are locked in the Morning Star’s brig and slated to be hanged along with Shaw back at Port Royal.

Thankfully, Morgan – having also survived the fall – sneaks aboard the Morning Star and frees her crew, and they throw Scully and his supporters overboard. They then sail up to the Reaper and begin waging a chaotic battle, during which Reed, Ainslee, and nearly all of the latter’s men perish. Morgan blows out the bottom of the Reaper and accidentally causes Shaw to get trapped by the weight of the treasure, and she then fights Dawg and kills him by shooting him with a cannon. She then saves Shaw and ties a marker barrel to the treasure before they both jump into the sea, after which a second powder store explodes and destroys the Reaper.

After getting the treasure aboard the Morning Star, Morgan tells the crew that they can either take their shares and retire from piracy, or come with her to Madagascar and add to the pile. The crew decides upon the latter choice, and Morgan and Shaw kiss and retire to Morgan’s cabin for some implied celebratory sex while the crew prepares to set sail.  

LONG VERSION:
One night, while the Morning Star is sailing in a gale through Crooked Man Keys (which Morgan [Geena Davis] believes is close to where Cutthroat Island is supposed to be) in an attempt to run Dawg’s (Frank Langella) ship, the Reaper, aground so Morgan can get his piece of the map, Shaw (Matthew Modine) sneaks into Morgan’s quarters and figures out the location of the island from the piece of the map he holds as well as Morgan’s piece. However, he soon gets confronted at gunpoint by Morgan, and after she has him mark the location on a chart on her table, she and her first mate Blair (Rex Linn) take him to the brig. Reed (Maury Chaykin) then enters the cabin and pens a letter containing the island’s coordinates to the corrupt Governor Ainslee (Patrick Malahide), then sends it off into the gale via carrier pigeon. A short time later, Scully (Jimmie F. Skaggs) mutinies against Morgan with the aid of most of the crew, then he has her, Blair, Glasspoole (Stan Shaw), Bowen (Christopher Masterson), and the few other crew members loyal to her placed in a longboat and set adrift on the stormy sea, intending for the gale to take their lives. Shaw manages to get free of his bindings and jumps overboard to pursue Morgan. Though the boat gets wrecked and two crewmen lose their lives, the current takes the survivors to Cutthroat Island by morning, but they don’t know where to start looking for the treasure since Dawg’s piece of the map is what shows its location. They check out a cove on the other side of the island and discover that the Reaper and the Morning Star are both there; Scully has allied with Dawg and provided him with the island’s whereabouts. 

That night, Shaw – having reached the island purely by swimming there – sneaks into Dawg’s encampment and snatches his map piece while he sleeps. However, just as he exits, a spider crawling on Dawg wakes him up, and when he notices his map piece is gone, he believes that Morgan is on the isle and has taken it, so he orders his men to find and kill her. Having already staked out near Dawg’s camp in order to steal Dawg’s piece somehow, Morgan spots Shaw fleeing the scene and tells her men to spread out to better their chances of catching him. The next morning, Morgan and company find Shaw sinking in quicksand, and after Shaw forks over Dawg’s map piece, they pull him out. Later, Morgan, Shaw, and the others check out the now-complete map, and Morgan and Shaw – with Blair, Glasspoole, and Bowen accompanying them – follow it all the way to a cliff face, and Morgan and Shaw descend down it into a cave and find the treasure trove deep inside of it.

Shaw tells Morgan to fetch the others while he starts hauling the loot to the entrance, but shortly after Morgan gets topside, she finds that Dawg and some of his men have captured her crewmates, and she gets seized as well. The villains take Morgan back to the cliff just as Shaw is attempting to haul up the first load of treasure, and Shaw tells Dawg to send Morgan down to him and he’ll send up the treasure. Dawg agrees and then pushes Morgan off the edge to kill her, but Shaw grabs her in time. Dawg orders his men to pull them both up, but Morgan and Shaw let go of the rope and plunge straight into the crashing waves below. Considering them dead, Dawg and his men find and bring up all of the treasure.

Shaw washes up on some nearby rocks alive and is found by Reed. When he asks Reed if he has seen Morgan, he replies that he has, for she had helped him ashore after he – like Shaw – escaped the Morning Star during the storm and swam to the island, and she had sent him to find him. He takes Shaw to where he says Morgan is, but he leads him to the beach Dawg landed on, which is now occupied not only by Dawg, Scully, and their crews, but Governor Ainslee and his soldiers as well. Ainslee explains that he has become partners with Dawg and Scully with plans to split the treasure between them, and he informs Shaw that he will be hanged once they get back to Port Royal. As Shaw gets taken to one of the dinghys heading for the Reaper, Morgan emerges alive from a rocky cove nearby and sees the scene unfolding.

After the alliance loads all of the loot and a bunch of other cargo onto the dinghys, Ainslee tells Captain Trotter (Angus Wright) that, out of discretion, the treasure will be loaded onto the Reaper and not on the British warship they came on, and he shall return to Port Royal on the Reaper as well. Once on board the Reaper, Ainslee orders Trotter to take a few of their men onto the Morning Star and follow after him, then tells Dawg that he will write him a full royal pardon and make him a privateer of the crown. Once Trotter and his men get Morgan’s crew onto the Morning Star, Trotter tells Scully to lock them in the brig and that they will be hanged along with Shaw. When Dawg’s first mate Snelgrave (Paul Dillon) asks Dawg why he is letting Ainslee live, he replies that he is studying Ainslee’s actions so he can learn how to behave more “proper”, having designs on Ainslee’s position as Governor of Jamaica.

Morgan sneaks aboard the Morning Star on the anchor as it is weighed, then slinks into the brig, kills the two British soldiers standing guard, and frees her crew. They then easily take back control of the ship, and Scully and his mutineers are thrown overboard while Trotter and the other soldiers are kept alive to give the impression to those aboard the Reaper that nothing is wrong. Morgan and her crew then powder up their guns and cannons and steer the Morning Star towards the Reaper. Ainslee sees this and, believing that Trotter needs advice, decides to let the ship catch up. However, Dawg senses that something is off-kilter, so he orders Snelgrave to power up all guns and cannons and then asks and gets permission from Ainslee to hang Shaw from the yardarm this minute. Morgan sees what is about to happen to Shaw and realizes that Dawg is testing her and her crew, so she quietly orders her men to ready the guns and cannons for firing.

However, Blair prematurely shoots and kills the hangman, and soon after, every cannon aboard both ships start to spit fire at each other, and Morgan has her ship steered right up alongside the Reaper. As the battle rages, Reed, Ainslee, and the British soldiers are killed (except for Trotter, who later switches over to Morgan’s side), and the Reaper’s crew sling hooks over to the Morning Star to pull the ship up to theirs before boarding it and clashing swords with its crew. After Glasspoole complains to Morgan that the Reaper’s crew outnumbers theirs, Morgan tells him to tell the others to hold off the Reaper’s forces for as long as they can, for she is going aboard the Reaper to blow out its bottom and get the treasure, and she lastly orders him to separate the ships when she does. Shaw sneaks down into the cargo hold first and finds the treasure, but Morgan – unaware that he is down there – locates a bunch of powder kegs and makes them explode, causing the mound of treasure to shift and pin Shaw against a support beam and seawater to start pouring in. Upon seeing the blast, Glasspoole orders his fellow crewmates to cut the hooks off their ship, and Morgan then finds Shaw in the hold, but Dawg spots her and calls her out. Morgan decides to battle her uncle and promises Shaw that she will be back for him, though he warns her that the ship is going to blow.

Morgan and Dawg battle up to the yardarm until Dawg sends Morgan falling back down into the hold, but a downed sail breaks her fall. She then finds a concealed cannon next to her and loads it up, and as she heads towards a second big batch of gunpowder while yelling to Shaw that she will be coming for him, Dawg appears. Morgan backs up slowly to the hidden cannon, and when Dawg gets close enough, Morgan unveils it and fires it at him, sending him flying through the ship and out through the stern dead. Morgan then goes down to the now-submerged Shaw, and after kissing him to give him some air, she shifts the boxes off of him and get him free. He tells Morgan that there is no time to tend to the treasure, and Morgan tells him to get to the deck. After tying a barrel to the treasure, she and Shaw get outside and jump into the sea just as the second gunpowder batch explodes and reduces the Reaper to splinters. After Morgan and Shaw emerge to cheers from the Morning Star’s crew, Shaw is initially disappointed that they have apparently lost the treasure, but Morgan’s barrel bobs up and she tells him that this barrel is tied to it all.

Morgan, Shaw, and the crew haul all of the treasure up, and after they all gaze at it, Morgan tells everyone that it will be divided equally amongst them. However, she then gives them a choice: Take their shares and retire from piracy, or come with her to Madagascar and add to the pile. Every crewperson aboard soon unanimously agrees to do the latter, and Morgan kisses Shaw. As the crew readies the ship for departure, Morgan tells Shaw that she wishes to see him in her cabin, implying some celebratory sex.