“The Four Feathers” marks our third foray into film (Matt’s second) and our first into the smiley happy world of Oscar Buzz. And it’s a doozy. “Four” pits Heath Ledger (“A Knight’s Tale”) and Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”) against the world in general and Sudan specifically in an adapted-from-the-book tale of honor, passion and British colonialism.
Ledger plays Harry, a soon-to-be-disgraced British army officer who must, as the tagline and preview describe it, “risk everything he loves” (Kate Hudson of “Almost Famous”) to “save his best friend” (Bentley). This is sort of the story. Ledger does kind of risk everything he loves after alienating everyone by being a coward and tries to save his best friend, all four of them, who have already denounced him by this point (hence the title).
At no point does he fight a battle by himself, help his friends stand against impossible odds, or any of the other heroic feats he’s credited with in the trailer. He does travel to Sudan to save his pals, where he overcomes impossible odds of his own (with a heck of a lot of help from “Gladiator’s” Djimon Honsou). He also…I’ll tell you what. Just watch the thing and work the plot out for yourself. That said:
Matt’s Take:
I find the term “Oscar buzz” funny. It invokes entertaining images of tiny metal statues with wings swarming around the heads of people like Russell Crowe or Steven Spielberg. They sit in their folding chairs, swatting away at gleaming yellow insects proclaiming “Irving Thalberg!” or “Three-time nominee such and such!” Spielberg especially has this problem; he occasionally tries to zap them with a backlight and with his friendship with the late Stanley Kubrick, but still they swarm. Anyway, I digress; let me get to the point.
Director Shekhar Kapur seems to have gold swimming in front of his eyes. Everything about “Four” screamed “Look at me” and “Award me,” and I don’t really see why. To clarify: in no way was it a bad film. I grudgingly admit that it’s a rather entertaining two hours of Ledger’s expressions (this time with dirt and a funky beard), Hudson’s smile, and comparatively good performances by Bentley, Hounsou and company.
It is not, though, worthy of any excessive praise. I’ve seen films shot better, acted more efficiently and edited much, much better than this film. I’ve read novels more engrossing and seen stories of honor and passion a good deal more dramatic. I’ve definitely seen better screen adaptations. Most of the book was probably just lost somewhere and the biggest failing of the film is that I don’t want to find it. I just don’t care. And, along the same lines, I don’t think Kapur is going to find fighting off the cloud of Oscars problematic at all.
Gabe’s Take:
Let’s get this out of the way early. I didn’t like this movie. Rambling when it should be rousing, “The Four Feathers” is somewhat of a mess.
The film, however, does have several redeeming strengths. As I will hammer home later, the plot is a humdinger, and the settings (beautifully captured by cinematographer Robert Richardson) are lush and vibrant. The film also benefits from a good lead performance by the ever-dependable Ledger (who I’ve been a fan of ever since he stole “The Patriot” right out from under Mel Gibson), who circumnavigates the changes in his character, Harry, rather effectively as the film progresses.
Bentley (stoic but dull) and Hudson (barely in the film) don’t fare as well, but ever-reliable Honsou (taking time from playing noble slaves in “Amistad” and “Gladiator” to play…a noble slave) gives fine support as Abou, the native who helps Harry survive his perils in the Sudan.
At its heart “The Four Feathers” is, and should be, a great adventure story; a stirring, sand-swept swashbuckler (nice alliteration, huh?) of honor, courage and ultimately, friendship. The love triangle, exotic locales and Harry’s epic quest for redemption are more than enough to sustain audience interest for two hours. The screenplay (coupled with alternately confusing and heavy-handed editing) emasculates the plot by cluttering it up with unneeded existentialism and by over-emphasizing some plot points while other equally important ones fall by the wayside.
The middle leg of “The Four Feathers” is its worst, as the film tries to be about…actually, I’m not sure what it was supposed to be about. Rather than simply using the war as a background for Harry’s story arc, the film seems to want to be about war on a more important and probing scale. Instead of exciting action sequences and flag-waving moments of heroism (which this film could have captured so very well), we get muddled ruminations on the horrors of war and the futility of British involvement in African affairs.
Kapur (helmer of 1998’s wonderfully sinister historical romp “Elizabeth”) does a fine job establishing the setting, but the same tricks that worked so well in “Elizabeth” (slow-motion, tilting camera angles, etc.) now seem stale and come off as nothing more than gimmicky.
Perhaps Kapur’s greatest fault is that he doesn’t seem to have enough faith in the story, a pity since the plot itself is such a good one. The pacing of he film also veers (on several occasions, drastically) from sluggish to frenetic without any real buildup or emotional payoff. Only the final dramatic scene between Harry and Jack really registers as deeply as it should, and, by that point in the proceedings, it is far too late for the film to pick up enough steam to escape mediocrity.