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.