The Archway

Issue date: 11/20/09 Section: Sports

Bill Nighy and Emma Thompson star in Pirate Radio. (MCT Campus)

A movie like Pirate Radio has the power to do wonderful things. It can show the world how rock and roll music changed the world back in the 1960s, how conservative British culture drove the rebellion now inherent in rock and music, and perhaps most importantly show how music can save a man's soul. Unfortunately this movie doesn't focus on these things particularly well, opting instead to entertain us with an excellent soundtrack, a group of hilarious characters, and simply showing us their escapades on a small ship set to the greatest music of all time.

The movie tells the story of a bunch of pirate radio disc jockeys who broadcast from a ship off the coast of London, mainly because no one in the country will play the music that they love so dearly. America was much more accepting of rock and roll during the sixties, with every station playing the (quite awful) rock music that we produced and proclaiming it as a revolution.

The government may not have been too keen on it, but the people ate it up. Despite the fact that in Britain the music scene was significantly better than ours (this is why Jimi Hendrix moved to London), the citizens and government did not take to it like we did in the States. Thus we have a bunch of rowdy, free loving, drug using, foul mouthed men living on a ship called Radio Rock and spinning records until all hours of the night.

The plot is flimsy, revolving around a teen boy named Carl (Tom Sturridge) who is sent to the ship by his mother because he was recently expelled from school. Why he is sent there of all places is a mystery, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. There are various escapades that happen throughout the movie, such as a battle between fellow DJs "The Count" (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Gavin, Carl's attempts to lose his virginity, and the boss Quentin's (Bill Nighy) various attempts to keep the crew under control.

No movie is without an antagonist, and in this case it is the notoriously uptight British parliament. Minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) is put in charge of shutting down pirate radio stations as they are seen as a menace to British society. He puts his best man, Twatt (Jack Davenport) on the job, and throughout the movie we see their (usually unsuccessful) attempts to rid the country of the radio menaces.

Continued...

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