The Charge of the Light Brigade Rating: Release Date: 07 May, 2002 Retail Price: $14.95 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.96! Cast: Trevor Howard John Howard David Hemmings David Andrews Complete Cast (17 total)

The Charge of the Light Brigade Reviews

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Accurate and Entertaining
A great depiction of the opening stages of the Crimean War and the infamous Charge. Steady acting from Hemmings, and a shinning performance from Trevor Howard, both quality British actors.

However for me the films animations made the picture complete, they add depth, meaning and importantly help to bridge the gaps. They depict both the British publics image of a heroic British Campaign against a tyranical Russia, and also the later realisation that war is far from glorious.

Richardsons version improves on almost every apect of the earlier picture staring Errol Flynn, which is seriously inaccurate. Put simply, Richardsons version is perhaps as close to the truth as is possible and in my opinion puts the earlier film to shame.

A well done telling of a legendary military fiasco
This is a well done and creative movie. Frankly, I had expected it to play fast and loose with the history of this Victorian military catastrophe in order to make an anti-war statement since 1968 was the height of the Vietnam War and the anti-establishment culture was in full flower. However, this movie treats the story with seriousness while using beautiful pictures and some wonderfully creative animation that helps evoke the times and move some aspects of the plot along.

The animation is in the style of Victorian political cartoons and those that were used in newspaper advertisements of the time. The animation used by Monty Python to segue between sketches is very close. It is used to illustrate the masses being urged to a passion for war against the Russians over Turkey, to show the character of some of the officers, and to pierce the bubble of Victorian public respectability.

Most of the movie sets up the characters and showing us how life was in 1854. We learn about the Empire's military was really a collection of private units that were funded by wealthy Peers to the Realm and led by them regardless of their ability. It was not nearly professional in the modern sense and that point is made several times by Captain Nolan (this is likely put on the character rather than being something held by the actual person).

We see how the soldiers were recruited, trained, brutally disciplined, and the pettiness of certain high officers and their celebrity. We follow the army to Turkey where the action described by Tennyson actually takes place. The actual Charge of the Light Brigade actually happens in the last act and is, as Tennyson said, the result of multiple blunders. The finest horsemen of the realm were ordered out to recapture British cannon were, instead, led into the maw of the Russian guns and one third of them were slaughtered and many more were wounded and the Light Brigade became the stuff of legend and buck passing.

The movie is very well done, a delight to watch and enjoy all the bucolic scenery of Victorian times as well as the grime of the slums, and the strange attitude they held towards war and the appropriateness of wives to travel with the officers.

Very much worth seeing.

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