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Title: An engaging historical drama... Chaaaaaaaaaaarge!!!
Review: A prideful vendetta between bullying English Lord Cardigan and a talented but hot-tempered junior officer is set against the disasterous British rout at the hands of Russia during the Crimean War. I can't speak to the supposed historical innaccuracies of this Tony Richardson film, since most of what I know about the infamous Charge I've learned from either Tennyson's rah-rah romantic poem, or Douglas Frasier's sardonic Flashman novels (with which it shares a certain mordant, antiauthoritarian darkness), but I did find it pretty entertaining and well-produced. It's also quite similar to Peter Wier's "Gallipoli," although this is more bluntly class-conscious and hysterical in tone. Richard William's animated sequences, used in the titles and interludes, are wry spinoffs of Gilded Age cartoons, and prefigure Terry Gilliam's animation in the "Monty Python" series. The closing battle is a bit muddled, but the drama of the first half is engaging.
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