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The Four Feathers (Widescreen Collector's Edition)

The Four Feathers (Widescreen Collector's Edition)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good movie
Review: Really enjoyed renting this movie. Rented it because the jacket and story line was interesting. After looking at some of the other reviews, I checked to see if I watched the same movie. Perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I had rented some duds recently. Sound: pretty good, bullets zip from back to front speakers. Picture quality: very good, desert scenes are beautiful. Story: good - coward tries to regain his dignity. Would have liked to know the characters better. Think this could have helped the movie. Characters: Djimon Hounsou is great as the slave helping our hero. This would be a great movie for you to rent because of the extreme different opinions expressed in these reviews. I saw it, enjoyed it, and will probably purchase a used one from Amazon.com in the future. ...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Honor and friendship in war
Review: This latest version of Four Feathers hits squarely on what soldiers in combat really fight for. It's not love of country or blind devotion to duty. In the end, as eloquently stated by a character who has lost his sight in battle, "You fight for the man on your right. You fight for the man on your left." Above all, this film defines personal honor and the meaning of friendship in the crucible of war and survival. As a movie, it's not perfect. It drags in spots. The Director has some ambivalence about embracing British Colonialism. At times it parallels our incursion into Iraq. The only difference is that we're in camouflage khaki instead of the Queen's Scarlet. Heath Ledger is excellent as the young Brit trying to find himself. His intensity outshines the movie's flaws. The key battle scene is excellent. (Real English troops play the Redcoats) The action around the infantry square is historically accurate and chilling. It is an epic to friendship and personal growth.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Never read the book, good movie though
Review: Well, firslty I must confess I have never read the book that so many other reviewers are comparing the movie to, so my aprassel will be based sheerly from the perspective of someone who has only seen the movie and has no interest in how the movie compares to the book it was based on.

On that note, the movie was great. I was excited to see this ever since seeing the previews and i wasnt disapointed. The movie is more of a love story and story of personal struggle and challenge set in the middle of a war in a far off land, than a straight war movie. The main character leaves the british army upon his unit's call to deployment in the Sudan to fight muslim guerillas. His friends (who go) send him a package of four white feathers, symbolizing cowardice. He then travels to the sudan to find his friends and prove to them he is not a coward.

The movie is well done, and has many scenes that provoke thought and could be ascribed a metaphorical or symbolic meaning - something I apreciate in a film. The action isn't as frequent as the preview implied, but when it comes it is well done, and epic. There is also a fair share of likeable characters and the acting is excelent.

All in all this was a great movie that was enjoyable on several levels, I definatley liked it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: great action! great epic!
Review: This is a great movie filled with lots of action. It's got a good story. I really liked how they did this movie, And it has become a favorite of mine. Anyone who loves a great epic must see this movie!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as Good As I Expected
Review: I really anticipated watching the newest adaptation of A.E.W Mason's classic story Four Feathers, for several reasons. Being such a classic story, of love, colonialism and redemption, I found it surprising to be the first adaptation since 1939!, so with Shekar Kapur as a director, with films like Bandit Queen and Elizabeth to his credit, it must turn out to be a classic.
Moreoever, epic historical films are few and far between these days, and cinema lovers can do with a bit of that once in a while.Yet I am sorely disappointed with the film.Although the direction acting and photography are good, the battle scenes in particular,there is still something missing,a major element in any genre which I personally found lacking here,connection and sympathy with the characters! There was none.I really did not care what happened to the characters,and midway through I found the troubles and suffering of the lead character played by Heath Ledger a bit annoying, instead of the supposed sympathy that I should have felt for him.
While Kate Hudson is a talented actress, I think she was miscat for the role. While she did a good job and managed her role well,and did an excellent accent, there is something too 'Californian' sunny and fresh about her appearance,and definitely non Victorian.
The British colonial past has been filmed many times, (my favorites still are the classic The Man Who Would Be King and Zulu) but the treatement of the subject varied greatly,from sympathetic to the objective to the politically correct,but it is up to the viewer to deduce his/her own conclusions, while it is up to the filmmakers to ensure that they will grab the viewer's attention and entertain him/her as well (The age of the Bergmans and Tarkovskys is over, while they were excused for not aiming at entertaining the viewer, but rather challenge him/her intellectually, it is the expection and not the norm).This what I found lacking in Four Feathers.
Having said that, the DVD is of very good quality and it has many extras that unfortunately I found more interesting than the film itself.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Very bad
Review: I bought this having very much enjoyed the 1939 version which I saw many years ago. That was a good, old-fashioned, stiff-upper-lip, spirit-that-made-an-empire rollick: doubtless a bit politically incorrect, but on that basis I thought this would be worth a try. It wasn't. In hot but misguided pursuit of political correctness, Harry Faversham is no longer the hero - he has a wholly distressing tendency to blub - that role being taken by a character who does not appear (as far as I can remember) in either the book or the 1939 version. I assume the change is in pursuit of being politically correct (and possibly increasing the audience) because the new hero is black. Now, I have no problem with black heroes (Bad Boys and Crimson Tide, for example, are both great films), but this casting smacked of opportunism (I thought the same of the casting of Morgan Freeman in the Costner version of Robin Hood) in that the story is not enriched or made better - merely diluted to its detriment. It might have worked had they made it more buddy-buddy (as they did with Robin Hood), but every time poor Heath Ledger gets into trouble along comes the new Hero and pulls his chestnuts out of the fire. Predictable and boring - pretty much an epitaph for this rather sorry film. I had hoped for better from the director of Elizabeth (which is great fun).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Slower than a Paralyzed Mollusc
Review: An astonishing mix of great and terrible photography. Painfully slow moving. It starts off OK and then doesn't seem to know when it should have ended.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: They dont make epics like this anymore!
Review: I thought this film for its type was very good not your usual shoot em up car chase trash that passes for cinema nowadays!
Atleast it had a reasonable story line and good acting.
The sweeping photography was worth the price of the ticket alone.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: EVEN GRAND PRODUCTION VALUES CANT SAVE THIS STINKER
Review: Lavish production values and superb costuming cannot save this version of the timeless classic -- This version is so weighed down with choppy plot flow, poor character development, and uneven (lukewarm) acting it's amazing it ever made it to the cinema. Wes Bentley's character is uninspired and particularly hard to relate to. There is an excellent "ambush" scene near the end of the film, along with a superb performance Djimon Hounsou, but most audiences missed it as they were already sound asleep. BLAME THIS ONE ON THE DIRECTOR. PEE-YOOOOO!!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Anti British Tripe
Review: Truly awful. It seems to be a common theme with trendy directors to belittle the achievements of previous generations and make pointless comparisons with modern attitudes. Having seen the classic 1939 version, whose attitidues seem laughable "dervishes and fuzzy wuzzies" by modern politically correct standards, this film really plummets the depths of hopelessness. The 1939 film culminates in the massacre of Omdurman, a British Victory, this one in the British defeat at Abou Clea, a fact that makes you wonder about the relative motivations of the different directors. While the battle scenes are reasonably well done, the jumps in the film don't really work - from the Desert to Southern England in a flash leaves you with a sense of being unfullfilled. The directors attempts at explaining this (and his obvious anti-British sentiments) are pathetic in the extreme, but then bashing the brits seems to be a modern participant sport for those with a chip on thier shoulders.


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