Ritchie could never deal with over-the-top material..

This script and movie desperately needed a kick-ass 'visualist' for a diruector.
...imagine this script directed by Tarantino, Paul Verhoven, Sam Peckinpah...
MIchael Ritchie was far more comfortable with dry social satire..(I'm guessing he was the one who encouraged Morricone to score dripping-with-irony
Korngold swashbbuckling music for the pirate raids)
This movie required breakneck pacing and in-your-face editing to keep the audience from pondering the ridiculous plot, the skimpy characterization....but Ritchie directed it in the pokey, stop-and-go style of a TV movie....the film has absolutely no forward momentum or urgency, so you've got all the time in the world to examine the idiocy of it. A similar Ritchie disaster: "Prime Cut", the cartoonish, way-over-the-top gangsters-in-the-heartland action film with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman....directed in typically lazy, slack style, as if he's waiting for the audience to pick up and appreciate the sly humor of it all.