Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

dougdoepke Hard to believe that much of this spectacular was filmed around greater LA— Chatsworth, Agoura Hills, et al. The final charge across open spaces is remarkable for its time. Where, I wonder, did Warners get enough horsemen to fill out the screen. In fact, the entire movie is bursting with massive troop movements that remain impressive. Still, many of those sudden horse plunges during the fabled cavalry charge were brought about by trip wires sending horses and men head over heels. Dramatic, yes; but even crueler since many of the mounts were killed as a result. Thankfully the practice was discontinued largely as a result of the body count here.The storyline fills in a background to Tennyson's famous poem, taking the usual Hollywood liberties with the original. Here it's not just the Russians opposing the Empire: it's also perfidious west Indians. Likely what we would now call Pakistan. Here they ally with the Russians after massacring civilians from the British fortress who believe they're being given safe passage. Of course, this sets up the brigade's desperate cavalry charge in revenge.Certainly, Flynn is at the peak of his swashbuckling career. In my book, he's never had an equal, and a much better actor than he credited himself. De Haviland has only an ancillary role, mainly to provide a little relief from all the guys and inject a little romance and plot rivalry between brothers (Flynn & Knowles). I still don't know how they did the desert fortress. It looks so real I couldn't spot a hint of matting. But did they build it, in addition to all the other expenses. All in all, the production is a marvel, never losing the human element that is always a risk with the new-fangled digital.Anyway, in my little book, it's a look back at vintage Hollywood hitting on all eight even if the message is "rah, rah, British Empire".

OldFilmLover The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) is a beautiful, polished epic film.The cast is superb, and the script and editing are so well-done that even at over 115 minutes the film never drags. This is one of Errol Flynn's best roles, and one of Patric Knowles's best roles as well. Flynn is brave and daring as usual, but without the flippant characterization of some of his other roles -- and the more serious performance is suited to the gravity of the story. The supporting cast of fine British and American actors is just right, with Spring Byington turning in her usual sparkling performance, and Nigel Bruce, C. Henry Gordon, David Niven, Donald Crisp, and Henry Stephenson making real contributions as well. Olivia de Havilland is fine in her role as the love interest of two brothers, doing as well as her role allows in a film which is basically a film about men.The photography, set design and music in this film are beautiful, state of the art for the time, making the experience of watching it enjoyable even if one is not paying much attention to the plot or dialogue. The final battle scene is stunning.Why this film was not nominated for more Academy Awards, I have no idea. I'm also stunned that its IMDb average is only 7.1. A grade of 7.1 implies mediocrity. This is not a mediocre film, but a great one. Anything less than 8 out of 10 would be a gross injustice, and a case could be made for 9 out of 10. It was the equivalent in its day of the "blockbuster" films of our day, but unlike those of our day, it did not rely on computerized special effects, but on fine craftsmanship in every aspect of the film-making. In a vacuum, I would probably rate this film as an 8.1 or 8.2, but I give it a 9 here as a sort of counter-balance, because 7.1 is ridiculously low. It would help if IMDb allowed half-stars; in that case I would have gone for 8.5. The film is available in a slim-case DVD edition in one of the 5-DVD Errol Flynn collections. This edition has the full 115+ minutes of the film, as well as some interesting period extras in the Warner Night at the Movies feature. The image and sound in this edition are very good.

weezeralfalfa A largely fictionalized mishmash of two historic disasters in two quite distinct British wars in the 1850s. Most of the film deals with the misadventures of the Indian British army in connection with a largely fictional Surat Khan, who seems to be a tribal war lord in present northern Pakistan(arid and mountainous). The attack of the Khan on the isolated outpost of Chukoti, somewhere in the general vicinity of the regional headquarters in Lohora(presumably, present Lahore, PK), and subsequent slaughter of the survivors, after Flynn and Olivia escaped on a raft, clearly is a reference to the historic massacre of Brits by Indian rebels at Cawnpore, which was located in present northeastern India. Then, suddenly, in the last part, we switch to the historically prior Crimean War, and have Surat Khan allied with the Russians against the Turks and Brits, hence allowing the transferred Indian Brit cavalry an opportunity to extract revenge on the khan. Although Flynn's character, who leads this dramatic misguided charge on the entrenched cannon-rich Russians does manage to kill the khan, he, as well as the rest of his cavalry, pay the ultimate price for their pyrrhic revenge. As scripted, Flynn's character is really more of an insubordinating fool than a hero. Reminds me of a rather similar dramatic ill-fated charge in the later "Fort Apache".Flynn had traded mortal wounds with the khan, hence conveniently ending the romantic triangle problem with his brother and Olivia's character. But, Olivia and his brother don't appear after the battle. Instead, we have a conference between the 3 commanders involved in the Balaclava fiasco with Henry Stephenson, who seems to have been the governor general of India, located in Calcutta, now strangely transferred to the Crimea. He implies that all 600 in the charge died: the British equivalent of Custer's Last Stand. Historically, this is far from the truth. Also, Lord Cardigan, who led the charge and hence was being played by Flynn, survived the charge. Historically, this charge by the sword and lance -wielding light cavalry was the result of confusion in officer communications. Central to this confusion was Captain Nolan, who was also the first to die in the charge. Thus, Flynn's character relating to this charge is an amalgam of Cardigan and Nolan. His character had previously incorporated some of Nolan's prior activities.Returning to the middle portion of the film, a huge army of natives armed with anachronistic modern repeating rifles surrounds the frontier town/fortress of Chukoti, intent on massacring its inhabitants. Unfortunately, the fort commander(played by Donald Crisp) had previously ordered most of the cavalry out on a detail, leaving Flynn as the effective commander of the few remaining. Looks like an Alamo situation. The tribals use their many ladders to scale the wall , and it looks like they will soon kill all. But, suddenly, we switch to the women and children huddled in a room, and the attack seems to stop for no reason?? Later, when the escaped Flynn returns with reinforcements, they find all dead: mostly women and children. Flynn vows revenge, and eventually gets his chance when he learns that the khan has allied himself with Russia against the Brits and Turks in the Crimea.....Incidentally, the original screenplay didn't include the Crimean War segment. However, it was feared that it was too similar to the recently released popular "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer"Henry Stephenson, who generally played fatherly authority figures in many films of the '30s and '40s, returns from Flynn's first starring role, in "Captain Blood"(as well as the award-winning "Mutiny on the Bounty) of the previous year. In the finale scene, he tells the 3 commanders involved in the charge fiasco that he takes full responsibility, after receiving a letter from Flynn's character admitting that he rewrote Stephenson's orders after having failed to convince Stephenson that his light cavalry unit deserved a chance to try to extract vengeance upon the khan. Stephenson burns his letter, preferring to take the blame in place of than his fallen 'hero'.After the joyous romance of Flynn and Olivia's characters at the end of "Captain Blood", it's curious that Flynn is cast as the odd man out in the triangular love affair in this next pairing, especially since the historical leader of the charge he plays survived the charge. Flynn's character would, of course, again die in "They Died With Their Boots On", in another foolhardy cavalry incident. Again, Olivia played his love interest in their eighth and final film pairing.At least we are spared the gruesome details of the historical massacre of mostly women and children at Cawnpore. Professional butchers were sent and literally hacked the victims to pieces. This instigated a furious response by the British, who slaughtered or burned thousands of Indians in retribution, with the battle cry "Remember Cawnpore".I think it's a toss up whether we see more falling horses during the charge or in "The Comancheros". In the latter, at least the cruel and often lethal use of trip wires to make the horses fall when desired had long since been abandoned.

Beam Me Up I give it a decent grade for action and drama. But like the poem of the same name, the movie glorifies a fine example of stupidity. The charge accomplished nothing militarily. While the brigade was not completely destroyed, it suffered terribly, with 118 men killed, 127 wounded and about 60 taken prisoner. After regrouping, only 195 men still had horses. The futility of the action and its recklessness prompted the commanding French Marshal Pierre Bosquet to state: "It is magnificent, but it is not war. It is madness." The Russian commanders believed that the British soldiers were drunk.So, the next time someone says, "Ours is not to reason why, ours but to do & die," remind them that it's from a poem about a military suicide run.