How
does director Shekhar Kapur, the skilled mastermind behind
"Elizabeth" and "Time Bandits" make such a
boring and useless flick? Beats the hell out of me.
Alas, I left the theatre with this very question puzzling me.
"The Four Feathers" is absolutely nothing...a shell of
a film that could have been something intriguing, romantic,
swashbuckling, and memorable. Instead, it is sappy,
sentimental, clichéd, and utterly, utterly too much like
everything else Heath Ledger has ever done. Talk about
typecast. Wes Bentley has been mediocre in his
performances since "American Beauty" (though "The
Claim" was slightly above par) and "The Four
Feathers" is no exception--if this were someone's first
glimpse at Wes Bentley, they might accidentally mistake him for
the worst actor on the planet.
Well, anyways, the plot is all about Heath Ledger trying to
prove he is not a coward. Wow--I am so moved. To
think, this is being praised by some as an 'epic'.
"Lawrence of Arabia" was an epic. "The
Godfather" was an epic. "Ishtar" was an
epic--a bad one--but an epic nonetheless. "The Four
Feathers" is certainly not an epic unless the definition of
en epic has dropped from "Gone with the Wind" to
"Encino Man" within the last few years.
There are only two bright spots in this dismal wasteland of
cinema--(1) the cinematography was well done by Oscar winner
Robert Richardson, and (2) Djimon Hounsou. Though his
character is the traditional 'buddy' sidekick, Hounsou gives one
hell of a good performance. It's about time he started
making more films, especially since he gave the performance of a
lifetime in Steven Spielberg's "Amistad".
So, basically, "The Four Feathers" is awful.
Well, not the worst film of the year, but pretty bad
nonetheless. I wasn't expecting to be dazzled when I went
to see this film, but I was at least expecting to be
entertained. But, as The Rolling Stones so
succinctly put it--"You Can't Always Get What You
Want".
