Nate and Hayes

The swashbuckling adventure, Nate and Hayes, is a long lost prototype for the more recent Pirates of the Caribbean. Morally-intact pirate, Captain Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones), adopts Nathaniel Williamson (Michael O' Keefe), a reverend's son, to fight the ultra-villainous, slave-trading pirate crew headed by bounty hunter, Ben Pease (Max Phipps). Hayes makes a living illegally selling weaponry to native islanders, but that's nothing compared to the misdeeds his ex-friend Pease has lately undertaken. After Pease's shipmates pillage and kill everyone related to Nate and his fiancé, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove), Bully Hayes springs to action, motivated by his own romantic interest in Sophie, which develops as the plot thickens. Nate and Hayes looks and feels like Indiana Jones, with Disneyland-like island sets, Tommy Lee as the heroic, charismatic guy full of one-liners, and natives costumed with generic "native" bones through the nose, feathered headdresses, and grass skirts, making it easy to date this film according to Harrison Ford's classic. Plentiful sword-fighting scenes and shots of pirate ships sailing the open seas guarantee to please pirate buffs, though Nate and Hayes doesn't have the swarthy power of classics like The Black Swan, or those starring Errol Flynn. --Trinie Dalton