The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake

Let's keep in mind the venue. Sci Fi network is notorious for having poorly produced original monster movies. Which is why it should be complimented when one of their movies strives for something more. A fictitious take on an actual historical character's adventures is always a dangerous gamble. However, in the case of The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake, Rafael Jordon does an admirable job of weaving actual historic legend with an interesting treasure hunt sort of storyline.

At times the character's actions seem predictable, and some of the sailors/pirates are a bit cliché, but often the dialogue is witty and sarcastically humorous. The CGI is bad, (as always in these shows) but the film's locations are actually quite impressive considering it is all in Bulgaria. The score sounded very "big" for this genre. That is a good thing. It sounded like a real orchestra as well. That is rare for Sci Fi. The sound design and mix were great. Nothing stuck out as bad or wrong, which is usually the sign of a good soundtrack, again, for this genre. The sword fighting was very good and those sequences were cut together very well by the picture editor. This is saying a lot, considering the shooting ratio was probably 3:1. I know from previous movie reviews, that these shows are shot in under 20 days, edited for two months and the sound mix is done in 4 days. When you break it down, it's a miracle that the movie is made at all. Quite an accomplishment for all those involved.

One of the best scenes in the show, is the slow motion filmed, pistol and sword dual between Drake and Sandovate, in the snow at the north pole. Very well done considering all the limiting factors of time and budget.

Adrian Paul and Wes Ramsey deliver admirable (pun intended) performances given the nature of the material and the time they had to develop their character choices. And if this is Sofia Pernas' first role in a TV show or movie as her IMDb listing suggests, look out! She was excellent in this and we will see more of her I am sure.

As far as other reviews submitted by haters, it is unfair to compare Sci Fi network originals with larger budget films. Everyone who is involved with these projects knows exactly what they are making and why. These movies are entertaining if you watch with the correct "perspective". Letting them tick you off because they aren't as good as you had hoped is a bit silly.

This was one of the worst movies I ever attempted to watch. I love Adrian Paul but his 'acting' was totally bad if you even want to call it 'acting'. It was as if he was resisting to even reciting the lines given in the script and just spit them out as 'whatever' - Okay so it was a badly written script. How desperate was Paul to do this? Even the sound track was bad! The whole movie was pitiful. I couldn't even finish it. I believe that anything (especially a film) to be done is worth doing right. It is possible to do even a low budget film in the right way but evidently the writer, producer and director of this film haven't figured that out yet and take absolutely no pride in what they do! Wes Ramsey (as 'Peter Easton') did the best acting of all even with the lame writing in the script. I believed his character anyway. Kudos to Wes for doing the best he could with such horrible dialog! Even George Lucas can write better dialog than Rafael Jordan! The overall storyline was interesting, even though it was certainly not reflective of actual events in the life of Sir Francis Drake. This venture was a total waste of time for the actors and anyone who was unfortunate enough to watch it, even for a few minutes. Even 'Ishtar' deserved an Academy Award compared to this flick.

Of course, other reviewers seem to really like this one. Everyone has different opinions and take aways from films they watch.

I have said this before and I'll say it now...SciFi (now SyFy) Channel should turn to the writers and directors of its wonderful 'commercials' to write a good 'original' film for its network! SyFy has proved to show horrible and poorly written 'original' films on a regular basis - Get with the program SyFy Executives! With the right writers, great made-for-TV films are possible - even on a lower budget.

This SyFy Channel TV movie is an attempt to mix the life story of Sir Francis Drake, that heroic Brit who defeated the Spanish Armada, with some old-fashioned fantasy heroics along the lines of a Sinbad movie or JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. The resulting concoction is a silly mess of bad acting, poor plotting, and the usual excruciating CGI effects that the SyFy channel deliver.

I wanted to like this film, I really did. I love all the old Harryhausen movies so something made as a tribute to them sounded good. Unfortunately, THE IMMORTAL VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN DRAKE is just too cheap to really work. The ships and sets are never convincing and the hammy actors in support are very poor indeed. Adrian Paul is awful too, particularly his broad farmer's accent which keeps drifting all over the place and had me cringing every time I heard it. The usual gamut of sea monsters and basilisks and the like turn up at every opportunity but the action is schlocky and will only be enjoyed by those in a very forgiving mood.

I wasn't expecting much watching The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake, but got a little better than I expected. I hate most of the SyFy originals, but found this one of their more tolerable efforts. The costumes and locations are great, the editing is a cut above the choppy feel I've often seen, the music score is grandiose and often epic, much better than the sluggish and over-bearing scores of most SyFy movies, the sword-fighting is decent and not as clumsy as I thought it would and the performances from Adrian Paul and Wes Ramsey. The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake does have its flaws though as well, namely the artificial-looking effects, the stilted and rather trite dialogue, scenes that aimed to have a tongue-in-cheek vibe but came across as lacking verve like the Turkish chase, clichéd characters and some of the other actors mumble through their lines. The story was a good idea to go on and had moments where it was crisply-paced and exciting, but others where it was rather dull and predictable. In conclusion, uneven but compared to other SyFy efforts it is reasonably entertaining. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I just watched this movie, and it was great, especially thanks to the awesome Adrian Paul. He was FUNNY, in this role, which was so different than the serious Duncan MacLeod from his fantastic show, 'Highlander'. I was pleasantly shocked to see that he hasn't seemed to have aged a single day since Highlander. (He'll be 50 in May...he looks 35!) It was great to see him sword-fight the badguys, and just so cool to see him in the role of pirate. I hope that there's a second movie, as the ending was left open. You could really tell that Paul had fun filming this movie. The only oddity was that the girl playing his daughter looked much too old to possibly BE his daughter, because Paul looked so wonderfully young! LOL!