The Four Feathers

I was awake at 4am, again, the other morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. An hour later I gave up trying and went downstairs, put the heating on and snuggled under a blanket on the sofa to watch a DVD I’d borrowed from my Dad.

The film was the 2002 remake of The Four Feathers and the reason I’d lifted it from my father’s shelf last time I visited was because my mate Dave has regaled me with so many stories about when he was in Morocco and found himself cast as an extra in the movie.

Dave’s stories were considerably better than the film.

It’s one of those Boys Own type stories full of action, heroism and loyalty among upper class officers in the British Army fighting the fuzzy wuzzies in Africa. It was written at a time when it was well known that God was British as He had ordained we should own most of the world and set about civilising the natives in the most patronising way possible, while shipping the wealth and resources of these countries back to Britain to help keep it Great.* The best versions of this film, therefore, are the ones that were created before WWII, when the British Empire was still intact and the movies can be seen within that context.

This remake fails either to recapture the essence of the earlier cultures, or successfully put a modern slant on it. Consequently, I really wouldn’t bother wasting 2 hours of your life on it.

However, I think I might have spotted Dave.

What do you think? He’s got a very distinctive brow.



* Using this theological interpretation, God has clearly been American for the past few decades, but it looks like he’s becoming Chinese now.