History's most famous mutiny, previously dramatized on-screen in 1935 and 1962, was again reenacted for movie cameras in this 1984 spectacle, an intelligently written period piece with a revisionist agenda. Director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out) presents in painstaking detail the taking of the Bounty by its crew, the casting adrift of its commanding officer, and the subsequent journey of the mutineers to idyllic Pitcairn Island. In his view, though, Captain William Bligh (splendidly played by Anthony Hopkins) isn't the one-dimensional villain of previous film versions: He's stern and repressed but hardly a sadistic tyrant. Head mutineer Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson), formerly depicted as a reluctant rebel acting solely out of principle, comes off as something of a dilettante, swayed from his duty without ample provocation. The Bounty, in addition to rehabilitating Captain Bligh's image, devotes considerable footage to his remarkable 4,000-mile journey to friendly shores and his subsequent efforts to bring Christian and his fellow conspirators to justice. Although it is not quite as rousing an adventure as the 1935 Clark Gable-Charles Laughton film, this Bounty is absorbing and elegantly appointed in the grand manner befitting the best historical dramas.