Soldier of Honor

Having savoured Evelyn Waugh's magnificent trilogy, I approached this filmic adaptation fearlessly. The expectation of seeing Daniel Craig, a favourite actor of mine, added to the enticement. Finally, being a WW2 films buff, I believed I was in for a treat.

What a letdown...

It's not that this mini-series is badly made, that Craig does not act well or that the dialogue is stilted. It is just soooooooo sloooooooooooow (except for some (too few) battle scenes) that it borders on boring. The one notable exception was the depiction of the battle for Crete, which looks as if was filmed on location. It had the flavour of the real thing, conveyed through the bright photography. Also, Robert Daws as brigade major Hound was fantastic.

To me (no prude) the love angle was over-emphasized, with Megan Dodds annoyingly bad. Altogether, it took up too much screen time at the expense of other, more important aspects like the War, character development or Guy's Catholic dilemmas.

Also, watching Richard Coyle acting in the same mode as he did in Coupling made me realize what a limited actor he is although again, I stress that in Coupling he was the heart of the show.

Some reviewers have already noted that this film does not compare well with the books it is based on. I will add that while most films indeed don't, this one was an extremely painful example of how not to make a TV series based on a book, especially a masterpiece.

'Sword of Honour' can be seen as an update of the Boultings' 'Pilgrim's Progress' - an anachronistic idealist fights in World War Two for reasons of chivalric honour, only to see the world overrun by liars, cheats, murderers, cowards and lunatics; where decency is pointless, even dangerous.

William Boyd's restructuring of Waugh's war trilogy is a miracle of adaptation - his leavening of verbal humour with slapstick; his capturing of Waugh's elliptical tone; his creation of haunting visual patterns acting as counterpoint to the horrific satire that is the war. There is one haunting sequence amid so much disintegration, the false bomb warning during Virginia's post-natal party, that magically hints at forces beyond man's self-defeating endeavour, while also rescuing a character Waugh was rather hard on. In the moral sense.

This is a splendid effort by all concerned, especially given the time constraint of about 200 minutes. As well as men and women are still marching off to war to save Western civilization, the movie has a contemporary message. The brevity of the movie, given that it tells a story, originally told in three novels goes against it. So much plot and many characters have been left out seriously compromising Waugh's comic vision. Waugh's original novels contain very amusing dialogue and much of the novels are just dialogue, the writer creating character out of what people say. Although the script used snippets of Waugh's dialogue,there is lots and lots unused. However, the script writers and all the people involved in the production did a masterful job of salvaging something of Waugh's original story. The other major flaw is in the casting of Daniel Craig as Guy Crouchback. Craig does not have the aristocratic presence to play Guy. His features, stature,and movement suggest a working class hero; he is great for contemporary characters where class is not an issue. But Waugh's works are all about class and Daniel Craigdoes not look the part of an aristocrat. He would be fine as a Lawrencian hero, Birket in Women in Love, for example. The rest of the casting is more or less spot on with some splendid choices of actors for Guy's father, Virginia, Ivor Claire, Ritchie-Hook,and Trimmer and everybody else. The book is both so much more outrageously funny and profound about life than the movie. Read the book but enjoy the movie,too; the chaps who made the film have obviously put on a good show in difficult circumstances. I am now going to reread the book for the umpteenth time. The movie inspires that.

How a scintillating trilogy like this could be transformed into a lifeless parody of itself by filmmakers is a complete mystery. It is lugubrious, slow and mistakes slapstick for wit. Waugh would have been appalled by this work. He was a nasty man in private life--a friend of Randolph Churchill whose boorish behavior was legendary--but he had high literary standards. Daniel Craig, incidentally, does not do humor well. The first review on this site must have been written by the movie publicist. The actress who plays his first wife is as wooden as Craig himself -- zero chemistry there -- and there is a supporting cast who clearly didn't have their heart in any of this. A total waste of time, so don't bother. I hope I have made myself clear in padding this out to the full 10 lines required. Left to me, I would have kissed it off with a simple, "No, don't think so. Take your dog for a walk instead."

This movie has all the qualities to be an entertaining and teaching film. There is a beautiful story of an honest and courageous man in a difficult and troubled world that revolves around. The actors and the sets, at certain moments, have some problems but the plot, the ideas, and the completeness of the life of man during the war, make us understand many useful things.