"The Four Feathers" (2002)

The director Shekhar Kapur's remake of ''The Four Feathers'' is a tepid, shallow tributary of larger, deeper bodies of waters like the historical revisionist film dramas ''Last of the Mohicans'' (which was also a remake) and ''Little Big Man.'' Heath Ledger stars as Harry Feversham, an officer in Queen Victoria's army, full of mellow bonhomie and a cheeky modesty. In the late 1800's he and his unit are in training in the British Army, and ''Feathers'' gives us a protracted and reverent look at their life.

Harry and his best pal, Jack Durrance (Wes Bentley), wearing a silly smirk that suggests he can't believe he's being paid for his bad British accent, are mad over Ethne. (Ethne is played by Kate Hudson, who seems to have been hired for balance: she possesses the one mock English accent worse than Mr. Bentley's.) But Ethne is wild about Harry. When the friends' unit is assigned to fight in Sudan, Harry is overcome with fear at the prospect of battle.

Jack and their fellow officers greet Harry's plight as a game that he is playing, and since Harry makes such a grandiloquent display of it -- and it's filmed with wide-screen splendor so that every twitch of his lachrymal glands seems visible -- we think so as well. That is until Harry resigns his commission, drawing disdain from his father, the general (Tim Pigott-Smith, who's playing the same exemplar of British priggishness he displayed in ''Jewel in the Crown''). Harry is given a white feather by four of his friends, a public repudiation.

What do you do if you're branded a coward and you know you're a man? In Harry's case it means you pack off to Sudan, wear a phony beard and join the natives in their battle. Harry couldn't fool a distracted 4-year-old, but in one of the film's many instances of absurdity, he goes native and somehow suckers the Africans. His mission is to rescue his friends, who quickly discover that they're in way over their regiment.

 

This director would appear to be an ideal candidate to oversee a remake of ''Feathers,'' with his penchant for showing how personal politics fit into institutional cruelty, as he did so elegantly in ''Elizabeth'' and ''The Bandit Queen.'' But ''Feathers'' so grandly plays out the imperialist fraternity of the British Army that it's as if Mr. Kapur were making a commercial for a way of life that no one misses. If he wants to underscore the macho superficiality of the traditions, the point could have been made much faster.

But the spectacle of clubby, empty-headed good cheer is so lovingly protracted -- this section takes up almost the first 20 minutes -- that we feel as if we're trapped reading a tribute to someone who few people particularly care about. It's the kind of wrongheadedness that can make one reflect kindly back on the schoolyard testosterone antics of ''Young Guns,'' a Wild West drama with a superficial historical perspective.

The casting of ''Feathers,'' which opens today nationwide, is along the same lines as ''Guns.'' The good-humored Mr. Ledger crunches his eyes into a pained crinkle; at this point in his career he's the wrong actor for this kind of thing. His welterweight misery seems even punier when Djimon Hounsou makes his entrance as Abou, the requisite, buffed sidekick.

Abou barely lifts his eyelids past half-staff when hearing of Harry's desperation to prove himself and his courage. It's embarrassing to treat Abou as someone incapable of understanding loyalty, especially when we know he'll eventually come around to assisting Harry in his struggle and of course wander off into the distance.

Mr. Hounsou, with his pride in movement and dogged confidence, is the kind of handy presence the picture could use more of. (His eccentric pauses and laughs suggest a modern-day version of Ralph Richardson, one of the stars of the 1939 ''Feathers.'') And with its jumps from past to present, the movie could use ballast. (An extended flashback just when it feels as if ''Feathers'' should be ending will probably produce a number of heavy sighs from the audience.)

The ragged condescension toward the natives, which includes such exquisite exotica as the fashion model Alek Wek as a slave who saves Harry's life for a moment of kindness, is the kind of tired patronizing that you'd hope Mr. Kapur could shove ''The Four Feathers'' past. Instead, he is shackled to epic-by-the-yard filmmaking.

On the other hand, one of the most immediate and shocking benefits of his direction is the action sequences, most notably one set piece in which an apparent victory immediately segues into a slaughter, with angles filmed from a vulture's-eye view by the cinematographer Robert Richardson.

But such few assets aren't enough to alleviate the film's shallowness. The picture's wheezing fussiness and devotion to the British empire and its minor nods to questioning unthinking loyalty to an ideal make ''The Four Feathers'' a possible first of a kind: a movie that's halfhearted about ambivalence. 

''The Four Feathers'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for violence, action, some bloodshed and several scenes of single-malt Scotch swallowing.

THE FOUR FEATHERS

Directed by Shekhar Kapur; written by Michael Schiffer and Hossein Amini, based on the novel by A. E. W. Mason; produced by Paul Feldsher, Marty Katz, Stanley R. Jaffe and Robert D. Jaffe; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Steven Rosenblum; music by James Horner; production designer, Allan Cameron; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 127 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Heath Ledger (Harry Feversham), Wes Bentley (Jack Durrance), Kate Hudson (Ethne), Djimon Hounsou (Abou Fatma), Michael Sheen (Trench), Alek Wek (Aquol) and Tim Pigott-Smith (General Feversham).