The Four Feathers 1939

 This is by far the superior version!

It's far clearer on the reasons why Harry resigned his commission, for a start.  The characters have proper conversations about it, and they include the scenes from the book of young Harry listening with horror to the old soldiers talking about battles, and then going to look at the portraits of his military ancestors which are all over the house.  Harry in the 2002 version, to me, wasn't convincing in his reasons at all.  

Also, Harry's father in the 1939 film dies before he resigns his commission - I had wondered how Harry had been able to afford to get to Egypt in the 2002 film, since he'd lost his officer's pay and presumably his father had cut him off without a penny.  In the 1939 film, he'd inherited his father's property, so had funds available.

The 1939 film also gives a good reason for Harry managing to disguise himself as an Arab without learning Arabic - he's supposed to be from a tribe who have had their tongues cut out!  Harry has a clearer plan of action too, though the character of Abou Fatma is absent, so he has no help to carry it out.

Ralph Richardson is very good as the officer blinded by sunstroke, and the 1939 film actually shows Harry getting him from the desert back to the British fort on the Nile, rather than jumping straight back to England. 

The battle scenes are epic in scale.  They were even filmed at the original locations of the battles, in the Sudan.  Apparently there were extras there who actually remembered the battles.  The 2002 battle scenes, especially involving the British soldiers forming a square, were also very good, though the film has been criticised for dressing the British soldiers in scarlet jackets, when they were actually wearing khaki at the time.  The 1939 film gets the uniforms right.   

The 1939 film was set ten years after the 2002 film - the Royal Cumbrians were sent to the aid of General Gordon in 1885, while the Royal Surreys were sent to be part of Kitchener's army in 1895, which meant that the escape from the prison at Omdurman was timed to coincide with the battle of Omdurman.

It was strange to see John Laurie playing the Khalifa, though.  I don't think a modern film would have cast a Scottish actor in the role.

It's also quite strange to think that British forces, and their allies, were fighting the Italians over the same terrain just a year or so after the 1939 film was made.

The Four Feathers 2002

 I've been looking for films featuring Michael Sheen recently - not his famous roles; I'm not really interested in him playing Tony Blair or the chap from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  I was intrigued by The Four Feathers, though, in which he plays Trench, one of the friends who presents the hero with a white feather when he resigns his commission on the eve of war in the Sudan.  The hero, Harry Feversham, was played by Heath Ledger.

It wasn't a very good film.  I read the book years ago, and saw the 1939 film (which at least made more sense).  The events of the 2002 film are crammed into a rather shorter time frame than the book, where Harry had plenty of time knocking around the Sudan to learn Arabic and behave as a convincing Arab.  Here, he was lucky to meet up with Abou Fatma before he got himself killed, and he didn't have time to learn much Arabic.  I'm not sure why Abou Fatma put up with him.

There are some odd jumps in the narrative, too - moving straight from Harry rescuing his friend Jack (whose gun has blown up in his face) to Jack back in England, adjusting to his blindness - and Harry's meeting with Willoughby is done in flashback.

Meanwhile, Michael Sheen is the most cheerful of the friends to begin with, until he descends into despair in the prison at Omdurman from which he is rescued by Harry and Abou Fatma.  He spends quite a while slung over a camel's saddle or being carried across the sand dunes.

I'm sure Shekhar Kapur, the director, wanted to say something profound about colonialism with the film, but I'm not sure what it was.  Still, the actors did their best with the script they were given.

Rob Roy

Well, that was a darn sight better than Braveheart!

I'd only seen clips of the 1995 film starring Liam Neeson, specifically the climactic duel between Rob Roy and the evil Archie Cunningham. The fight arranger was William Hobbs, who was mentioned admiringly by Peter Morwood in the panel on screen swordplay at WorldCon this year.
It was the sword choreography in that duel that made me want to see the rest of the film, so now I know just what bad blood was between Rob Roy and Archie, who really had no redeeming features whatsoever. It was also obvious that the Marquis of Montrose, played by John Hurt, knew that there had been some underhand dealings - suddenly, Cunningham could pay his tailor's bills, and where could that money have come from if it were not the cash that Montrose had loaned to McGregor, and which had been stolen from him?

The film was shot entirely on location in Scotland. I was a bit dubious about all the long shots at first, but it was worth it to show off all that magnificent scenery.
There's also a scene at a Highland celebration where a woman sings a song in Gaelic - I see from Wikipedia that the soloist was the lead singer from Capercaillie, Karen Matheson.
Oh, and Rob Roy's little brother Alistair was a complete idiot.

Eagle of the Ninth

As a child, I adored the work of Rosemary Sutcliff, and one of my favourites was the Eagle of the Ninth, telling the story of the Ninth Hispana Legion as it marched north into the mists of Caledonia and into legend.
At the time, the early 1950s, Rosemary Sutcliff was working from current archaeological research, by which the Ninth really had marched north and disappeared. Since then, traces of the Legion have been found at a later date, elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but when she was writing it really did seem that they had vanished into the mists.
And the other inspiration for her story was archaeological work at Silchester, where a Roman eagle statue had been found hidden in the hypocaust of a villa there. You can still see the Silchester eagle, at the Museum of Reading, though now it seems that it may have been part of a statue in the town, and not a legionary eagle after all.

In 2011 a film was made of the book, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, and though Donald Sutherland was perfect as Uncle Aquila, the plot of the film left out about half the book, jettisoning Cottia (the girl next door), Cub (the wolf cub), and Marcus's disguise as the oculist Demetrius of Alexandria completely. And they changed the ending.

In 1977, though, BBC Scotland made the story into a series. I loved the series when it was first shown, starring Anthony Higgins as Marcus and Christian Rodska as Esca, so I was delighted when I learned that it was now available on DVD, from Simply Media - and a little apprehensive. Would it be as good as I remembered?
They obviously had a tiny budget, but they did have the advantage of the rolling Scottish hills to film in, which gave it that epic scope. The director also managed to film battle sequences quite cleverly using overlaying images and only about a dozen extras.
It's a difficult book to make a story of, with a lot of the action in flashback as the story of what happened to the Ninth is told by a Roman and a Caledonian tribesman, and towards the beginning of the book, Marcus spends months recuperating from his wound at his uncle's house with not a lot happening. They manage to fit the story into six episodes quite satisfactorily, though.
I was very happy. They got it right.

Arn the Knight Templar

In 2007, when this was made, it was the most expensive film ever to be made by the Swedish film industry, at around two million kroner. It's actually two films, which were also cut into six TV episodes, adapted from a book by Jan Guillou.
The cinematography is beautiful. Honestly, if the series were rubbish it would be worth watching just for the beauty of the shots. It was filmed in Sweden, Scotland (for monasteries and castles) and Morocco standing in for the Holy Land. The costumes are extremely good as well.
It started off in Swedish, with subtitles, but then Simon Callow appeared, as the abbot of a monastery, and he spoke English, and another monk at the monastery spoke French - and when they got to the Holy Land various characters, including Arn himself, spoke Arabic.
It's a love story - due to local politics, Arn and Cecilia are forced to do penance for their forbidden love for twenty years, Arn as a Knight Templar and Cecilia in a convent with an evil Mother Superior (who comes from the rival clan). Despite all their troubles, they never lose faith in each other, even though getting back together again is not as easy as it might be.
Any story involving the Knights Templar and the Crusades has to involve the Horns of Hattin - the disastrous battle (for the Christians) which Saladin won, after which Jerusalem was his for the taking. Sure enough, Arn gets to take part in the battle and not be slaughtered at the end as a Templar.
When he gets back to Sweden, he's involved in local politics again, defending the sons of his friend King Knut from the Svarker clan's takeover after Knut dies. There's a pitched battle in which the Folkunds are at a serious numerical disadvantage - but Arn didn't spend twenty years in the Holy Land twiddling his thumbs, and he comes up with the tactics that swing the balance in their favour. Some people have reviewed the film and complained that he invented Agincourt two hundred years too early, but his appreciation of the power of the longbow was well set up earlier in the story.
So, this is one of the more historically accurate films I've ever seen, with a good love story, exciting pitched battles and a hero who is straightforwardly honourable and faithful - a real old-fashioned hero, and a heroine who goes through terrible trauma to be true to him. I thought it was wonderful.