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Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The most just rating is a comparison to previous iterations, foremost on my mind the book, and by this metric the film performs poorly.I don't find fault with the actors, so much as the writers, and to a lessor extent the director.Thw film opens with a parallelism between sport and war, cutting down on the backstory of the main character and his military lineage and the expectations of his father, to build a sense of camaraderie, achieving one admirably, but no doubt erring somewhat in the sacrifice of the proper measure of Victorian propriety. I thought it frankly influenced by the Gilbert and Sullivan scene of Chariots of Fire, which though also an Empire era film, takes place in a different time period.And personally, I think Kate Hudson is ravishing here.Where the film really starts to fall apart, is when they leave England. Quite frankly, this film is in a higher taxon than mere political correctness. It is a white guilt film, joining such others like the recent Green Hornet and Lone Ranger films, where a perfectly good hero is ruined and made to play second fiddle to whatever minority character can be found, whether or not that character had really been done any injustice.The good whites must establish their bona fides by preventing their evil brethren from hurting or impugning the other races, it seems. The bad ones, well, we don't care what happens to them, do we?The photography is not exactly Lawrence of Arabia but pretty uninspired. One scene has the Mahdi's forces rise up from their hiding places underneath the sand, where they would have been cooking quite well. I saw this same scene more or less in the Costner Robin Hood film, in temperate England where it made more sense.There are many continuity errors.The main character seems to bumble from one scene to another, saved each time by his more heavily pigmented and thus more capable friend. Not an Arab, as in the book, but a black to more properly service the feelings of white guilt. He is tied to a post and whipped like a slave by an evil white, in one seemingly meant to be cathartic scene.Our new main character, spends a lot of time shirtless to show off his black skin and impressive muscles, but let us not forget this is an equatorial sun, and no man in his right mind would be caught shirtless.Of course, all this is really forgetting that it was the Arabs who were the slavers and the British who fought them (under Christain influence, no less!) to destroy the slave trade, as much as was practical, for one can still find slaves today in many parts of the world.The one likable British soldier, with one or two good scenes, is the blind man, a character performed admirably. But, alas, they leave out the small homage to the blind traveler (a real life character who traveled thousands of miles, sightlessly, on his own) that was in the much superior book.If one wants to see a movie version, the '39 film is a good adaptation.

Harry Faversham (Heath Ledger) is a new young British officer getting engaged to the Ethne (Kate Hudson). He and his friends are dispatched to Egyptian-ruled Sudan to fight the Islamic rebels of the Mahdi. He is more reluctant than the rest. He resigns before the regiment ships out. His father disowns him. His girl abandons him. His friends William Trench (Michael Sheen), Tom Willoughby (Rupert Penry-Jones) and Edward Castleton (Kris Marshall) each sends him a feather of cowardice. Ethne sends him the fourth feature. He undertakes a journey to rejoin his regiment in Sudan. Meanwhile, it's a tougher fight than the British expected with a more determined opponent. Former mate Jack Durrance (Wes Bentley) is sent back to convince the public to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum. Ethne is taken with Jack. On the march there, Harry surreptitiously joins the troops as one of the local baggage handlers. There are many Mahdi spies among the them. Abou Fatma (Djimon Hounsou) befriends the mysterious Brit among the locals.The movie is too slow at the beginning. The structure is too standard and old fashion. This being a remake is begging for a more imaginative structure. The beginning can always be done in flashbacks. This is too stale of a costume drama. It needs something in the beginning to keep the audience's interest. It needs an ambush on the Brits. It needs an action scene to bring in some excitement. The rest of the movie is setting up to the British square. That battle is impressive but it's the only thing that is impressive. Harry in the middle of the battle is somewhat ridiculous. The rest of the movie is lackluster.

Not because The Four Feathers is a favorite from childhood that wears very well but because, after recording from TMC and archiving on a disc, I discovered I had a 115 minute movie, not the 75 or 90 minute versions either listed on sites like IMDb or for sale from, well, everyone.Initially I thought that there was something wrong with the recording but, after a couple of hours looking for intermissions, repeated scenes or recording breaks it turned out this was the entire movie and where TMC got it is a wonderful mystery. TMC itself lists it as a 90 minute movie and there was no mention of having discovered this version either on-site or during the presentation.Whatever - I'm just glad they did because those extra 25 minutes add to the film tremendously and fill in a lot of holes that I'd noticed, even as a kid, in the 90 minute version. As much as I'd enjoyed it, The Four Feathers always seemed truncated in that version but I'd always blamed the local stations for chopping it up. Now I know better.This version does start slow, overdoing the set-up, but that is a very, very minor flaw. Once it takes off (a poor term for any British movie) it become a true marvel of film making. The pace is very much British, measured like a metronome set at 2/4 lentando, but that pacing actually adds to the impact of each scene, especially the action scenes, which seemed discordant in the 'original', but now have the length to stand on their own as mini codas instead of irritating diversions.Ironically, those extra 25 minutes speed the viewing by eliminating the 'stops' (those breaks when one scene doesn't quite flow from another, pushing you off the screen) and restoring the seamless flow of the movie.So, thanks TMC, wherever you found this, for a very welcome surprise.Update 12-16-13Just noticed that IMDb has me reviewing the 2002 version. Never saw it; this review is for the 1939 version.

This movie is not the flick with those good emotional drama that tugs at you nor does it feel like it has heart to it. In fact I was quite bored with this movie and quickly lost the intention for it. Now I haven't read the novel but after watching this flick I don't really feel like it. But it did sort of caught me off guard since I thought it was gonna go in that "The Count of Monte Cristo" direction but it didn't really. The thing is this movie fails to leave that impact even near the end. The transition from a guy starting out as a coward becoming heroic is done in a manner where there isn't a single gripping moment in the entire movie. Heath Ledger and Wes Bentley seemed to do well, at least with what they were given. But Kate Hudson who plays the love interest between the two male leads is the most dis-likable character in this movie. Despite her not even being in the movie much. This is pretty much a bland and over drawn out movie that becomes very predictable early on.4/10