What was once standard procedure for starlets -- dirtying up for Oscar consideration -- gets a gender spin in The Four Feathers, a beautifully shot but dull and ankle-deep "epic" that is to Lawrence Of Arabia what Heath Ledger is to Peter O'Toole.
That is to say callow and sophomoric with no sense of what made one's precursors classic.
The Aussie-born Ledger -- the prettiest boy in Hollywood at the moment -- is the object of uglification in this British Empire period piece about a soldier who is dubbed a coward for resigning on the eve of battle against "the Mohammedans," and who then pursues his own rescue adventure in the Sudan.
Lost in the desert, drinking the blood of his own camels, passing as an Arab (!), living in what we must assume is their customary squalor, and eventually killing time in an overcrowded pit of a prison, he comes to resemble those pictures we saw of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Indeed, if Lindh were British and actually working as a fifth columnist behind enemy lines, this would be his life story.
Instead, we get nothing quite that interesting -- just some Hollywood actors essaying plummy Masterpiece Theatre accents and playing soldier, interminably. And of course, sand.
The Four Feathers is the second movie to be made from A.E.W. Mason's epic novel -- the first being a 1939 actioner with Ralph Richardson. It introduces Harry Faversham (Ledger) as he graduates from military school circa 1898, with a game of rugby and a jolly party at which his engagement is announced to the fair Ethne Eustace (Kate Hudson, whose on-again off-again accent is also just fair). We also meet Jack (Wes Bentley), Harry's best friend who secretly covets Ethne.
However, other than a glib offhanded dig at his father, we get little indication that Harry is seething with self-doubt, and a questioning of military values that screams at the core of his soul! Cue Heath Ledger looking pensive.
But quit he does, and assuming they know nothing about the plot going in, the audience should be just as confused as Harry's mates, who nonetheless say their piece with the delivery of the four feathers of cowardice from the title.
Shunned even by his fiancee (in one of her few scenes in the movie -- war is hell for female leads) Harry heads to the land of the heathen to "go Native." Why? Who knows? There's no time to get into interior dialogue when there are frankly stunning mile-wide dunes for director Shekhar Kapur to frame, usually for about the length of time it takes to cross one by camel.
Inept in the desert, Harry almost delivers the ultimate gift -- a really short movie -- but is saved by a burly guardian angel named Abou (Djimon Honsou). Why? Who knows? (His answer, "God put you in my way" makes more sense than any explanations we get about Harry). What's important to know is that Abou is a once-common literary device. He's Harry's Gunga Din, the "good" black man, the noble savage.
From its puzzling beginning to its ending -- at once Hollywoody and ambivalent, you feel there's plenty that wants to be said in this movie, but that no one knows how to convey it.
And it's hard to be patient about such shortcomings when you feel as if you've got sand in every crevice of your body.
(This film is rated AA)
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