Rapa Nui

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 28, 1995 | by Gary Arnold

There's an easy way to finesse the disappointment likely to result from Waterworld, the prodigiously expensive but lackluster new spectacle from Kevin Costner. Catch up with Rapa Nui, the impressive epic he coproduced just before his waterlogged misadventure.

Distilling tribal legends that try to account for a destructive social upheaval in the late 17th century, Rapa Nui casts Jason Scott Lee and Esai Morales as childhood friends pitted against each other in a high-stakes athletic competition. There is also a romantic interest: Both young men covet the beautiful Ramana.

Now available on home video, Rapa Nui was denied an extensive theatrical release in the fall of 1994 when Warner Bros. wrote it off as an expensive lost cause. The island epic overran its $16 million budget by an estimated $8 million. Costner's production company picked up the tab.

In retrospect, one wonders why a pictorially splendid and thematically astute film like Rapa Nui didn't have a champion somewhere in a major studio. The movie was shot entirely on location in its authentic setting, the remote landfall renamed Easter Island by Dutch explorers in 1772. It was daring to shoot 1,500 miles away from the nearest filmmaking infrastructure, but the illusion of a lost chapter of history coming alive proves extraordinary. The tragic past envisioned in Rapa Nui is far more stirring than the illusion of futuristic barbarism contrived for Waterworld.