Avis Metacritic

Splendidly spectacular, intelligent and very well-acted.

What The Four Feathers lacks is genuine sweep or feeling or even a character worth caring about.

Ultimately, The Four Feathers is strong where its predecessors were weak (in the authenticity of combat) and weak where they were strong (in the larger-than-life quality of the characters). It's not a good exchange.

The film's opening and closing moments are weirdly reminiscent of "Black Hawk Down," another tale of Western soldiers in over their heads on the dark continent -- clearly no one these days understands manifest destiny.

It should have been an old-fashioned rouser, and sometimes it is. The great cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK) lights the battle scenes like action paintings. But Kapur weighs down the tale with bogus profundities.

Feels both tiresomely old-fashioned and disturbingly topical.

Offers too small a dose of the blood-and-sand adventure you expect from this sort of big-budget Hollywood remake. As it is, it borders on The English Patient's on again-off again heroics, minus Anthony Minghella's patient skill in eliciting romantic suspense.

Illogical and glum. [30 Sept 2002, p. 145]

Such few assets aren't enough to alleviate the film's shallowness.

A mindless muddle.