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.

Plant a Tree in '73

 I listen to Radio Hereford and Worcester in the mornings, and this morning they were getting terribly excited about a tree planting campaign.

We've been here before.

In 1973, I was Form Captain of my class at secondary school, and the most important thing I did as Form Captain was to Plant a Tree in '73.  Every Form Captain went out to the ground around one of the gyms, and we all planted a sapling there.  We thought that we were helping to save the planet.

Those trees are not there any more.  The school is not there any more.  So really the campaign didn't do a lot of good.

I hope this campaign does better, but I'm sceptical.

Trigger-Happy Cops in Prodigal Son

 I've just started watching Prodigal Son, mostly because Michael Sheen is in it as the serial killer dad, but I'm quickly warming to the other members of the cast as well.

There's one thing that really jumped out at me in the first few episodes, though, and it's how the members of the NYPD portrayed here are so quick to pull out their guns.

Now, this is a series that is approving of cops - they are solving some grisly murders, after all, so they're obviously the good guys.  But in so many situations their first response is to point a gun at someone, while someone else yells "NO!  Don't shoot!"  For instance, Malcolm Bright falls asleep in an office in the precinct, has a nightmare and starts running.  Despite the fact that he's in an area of the precinct that he's obviously authorised to be in, and that he's also obviously unarmed, half a dozen officers immediately point guns at him, and it's left to the woman on the team to wake him up, bring him back to reality, and save him from the very real risk of being killed.

In another episode, the murderer has been dosing victims with LSD before killing them - the officers know this, but still their first response, not the last response, is to point a gun at the victim who is obviously tripping.

I'm sure that this portrayal of the police is reasonably recent - I'd have to go back to watch a few episodes of Kojak or something similar to be sure, but I'm pretty sure Kojak was more often seen with a lollipop than a gun in his hand, even though there was a lot of violence in the show.

I've also been thinking about the recent protests in the US with the slogan Abolish the Police.  If Prodigal Son is a favourable depiction of police officers in action, and they are shown to be so trigger-happy, I can't say I'm surprised that there is a protest movement against that style of policing.