Movie Reviews

The Four Feathers is an 'epic' film set in 1898 Sudan, starring Heath Ledger as Harry Faversham, a British soldier who bails out of the army right before being sent off to war. After receiving a package containing four white feathers (symbols of cowardice during the time) from his previous friends and ex-fiance (Kate Hudson), Harry secretly follows the British war party and eventually ends up rescuing some of his friends.

It's a good-looking film, with nice production design. My problem with The Four Feathers is that it really seems to hold back in a lot of respects. The characters are decent enough, but they're all more-or-less uninspired, and not exceptionally interesting. The biggest problem with this sort of restraint in this sort of film is during the battle scenes: there's some large-scale battles, but they're all so tame and low-key. I'm not saying that blood and guts are necessary to make a battle scene interesting, but the lack of that stuff here had me inclined to believe that the film was targetted mainly at young female teenagers who are obsessed with Heath Ledger and who might be turned off by too much violence. If you're going to try to make an epic film like this, holding back on that sort of stuff, in my opinion, only does more harm than good.

The Four Feathers wasn't bad, but it was pretty darn mediocre.