The tale of honour, cowardice and redemption during the 1875 North African campaign by AEW Mason has made it to the big screen in six different versions, the most notable being Zoltan Korda's, in 1939, with John Clements and Ralph Richardson.
For Shekhar Kapur, this seventh version proves one too many.
The film is handsomely mounted, but so is a stuffed tiger. Production designer Allan Cameron deserves a namecheck for the weight of elegance on screen and the shift from the claustrophobic interiors of Victorian England to the breathtaking sandscapes of the Sudan, photographed with astonishing beauty by Robert Richardson. But once the non-British actors open their mouths, we become aware that something is amiss.
Australian Heath Ledger cannot get to grips with his accent (recalling Keanu Reeves's bizarre vowel sounds as Harker in Dracula) or Harry Feversham's character. Is he a coward or a conscientious objector?
His resignation of his commission the day after his regiment is summoned to the Sudan to put down a native rebellion is regarded in a very poor light by his three best friends, his father and his bride-to-be, Ethne (Kate Hudson). As his chums go off to give the natives a damn good thrashing, Harry is left holding a packet containing white feathers, the traditional symbol of cowardice.
In spite of Kapur's attempt to redraw a stirring, pro-Empire monument to jingoism as an ironic comment on the futility of heroism and war, The Four Feathers merely drags itself towards its pitiful conclusion. The small, telling details of Korda's version - including the handing back of the feathers - have been lost amid a welter of political correctness.
The central battle scene is magnificently filmed, with one stunning (yet too brief) overhead shot which delivers a genuine jolt of panic, and the seething mass of the prison in which Harry finds himself en route to his redemption is desperately uncomfortable. These are minor compensations in a very flawed film.
The Four Feathers
Cert: cert15
