Guy Ritchie: Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

8. Swept Away (2002)

You can imagine how something like Swept Away, which made an embarrassing $1 million at the box office on a budget ten times that, might happen. Madonna, bored with whatever else was occupying her career at the time, turns to her husband and says: "Let's do something. Let's make a movie together." Guy Ritchie, at this time still enamoured with his wife, looks deep into her eyes and says: "Yeah. Okay, babe. Why the f*ck not?" Swept Away is a terrible, terrible film. It is the worst thing Ritchie has done by a million miles - a far cry away from the rest of his bad films. A remake of the far better 1974 film of the same name, the picture stars Madonna (cringe) and an actor called Adriano Giannini, whose career sort of died with this film, as an insufferable pair stranded on a desert island, a fate which actually seems like a better alternative than sitting through this total schlock. Swept Away doesn't feel like a Guy Ritchie movie. It's boring, awkwardly-staged, filled with terrible performances and dialogue cues; the very definition of career-ending film. Madonna attempts to act her way through it and fails at every turn, rendering it as just about the most uncomfortable piece of cinema in recent memory. It's almost like a parody. It's rumoured that Lina Wertmüller, director of the original Swept Away, walked out of the theatre having seen Ritchie's remake and cried out: "What did they do to my movie? Why did they do this?" You can't sum up the awfulness of Swept Away any better than that.