Sharpe's Waterloo

Description

Life seems to have settled down for British Officer Richard Sharpe as he enjoys a much-deserved rest at a French chateau with his new love, Lucille. However, the news of Napoleon's return from exile drives Sharpe back to the army. He is placed on the staff of the incompetent British ally, the Prince of Orange. Reunited with his Chosen Men, Sharpe abandons his inept commander and organizes the defense at the farm of La Haie Sainte. It is here he plays a key role in one of Britain's most famous victories, the Battle of Waterloo.

Customer Reviews:

Three-and-a-half stars for climactic "Waterloo".......2007-04-24

Phew! The fourteen-episode Richard Sharpe series of BBC adaptations of Bernard Cornwell's novels is one heck of a production. Taken as a whole, this series deserves five stars without question. This is old-fashioned storytelling with a lean budget, and for the most part it works splendidly . . . except for "Sharpe's Gold," of course.

But "Sharpe's Waterloo" just doesn't quite work as well, and the problem is one of scope. Most of the other Sharpe episodes were severely scaled-down versions of Bernard Cornwell's novels. But it was more charming than jarring to see a handful of Riflemen and redcoats comprise the entire South Essex, and thanks to skillful camerawork the episodes were plenty thrilling.

But with Waterloo, things are different. Waterloo is not an invented Bernard Cornwell tale, but a real clash of 300,000 soldiers in a small area. Further, it is one of the defining battles of Western Civilization, and its echoes are still felt today. While the BBC has clearly given the filmmakers a larger budget, "Sharpe's Waterloo" nevertheless comes across as amateurish. Others have invoked Ted Turner's wonderful production of "Gettysburg" - "Sharpe's Waterloo" does not measure up in either story or grandeur, and the battle demands better.

The story opens with Sharpe comfortably living in Normandy with Lucille, but that idyll is soon shattered by Napoleon's escape from Elba. Sharpe promises Lucille that he will not fight, but everyone knows that is a lie. Soon, Sharpe is attached to the staff of William of Orange, a Dutch idiot who is about to get thousands of men killed. Sharpe and "Silly Billy" are even more at odds than oil and water, and this relationship gets ugly quickly.

Sharpe is rejoined in uniform by Hagman and Harris, but while Sergeant Major Harper has returned from Ireland, he has not reelisted. Instead, he makes the conscious decision to hang back even though he is often in harm's way - it's a jarring decision for the filmmakers, for those of us who are familiar with Harper from the novels have a hard time picturing him standing to one side while a battle rages five feet away. Both Hagman and Harris get small moments in the sun in their final Sharpe movie, and that's a well-deserved honor.

But even though the movie has a few captions trying to tell the audience what is going on, the battle is never really explained and one is left wondering just what happened. Again, Waterloo deserves better.

The one thing that "SW" gets right much better than any of the previous Sharpe BBC episodes is the human cost of war. While we have seen plenty of soldiers killed in this series, "SW" contains many more close-ups of mangled bodies, sobbing soldiers, and Sharpe shows much more emotion than he usually does when confronting the death of the anonymous rankers.

If you have watched the Sharpe series so far, there's no way you're going to avoid "Sharpe's Waterloo." With luck, you will enjoy it more than I did - I find it fine, but I wanted so much for it to be great. And that is a disappointment.

Pretty Good, BUT.......2007-02-11

OK, this was a pretty good installment of the sharpe series. However, like all of them could have been better with a higher budget...Maybe one day it wouldnt be a bad idea to re-do this series as a two or 3 part feature film like lord of the rings---juice it up alot...ANYWAY, they did the best with what they had. Sean Bean was great- I loved his curse words...very original... Paul Bettany did a great job as the douche bag prince of orange...and the two gay guys did a great job portraying two gay lover/soldiers/tag team...It was really cute how they died holding eachothers hand. I was happy to see Sharpe finally got to see Boney and that he persevered through the prince of oranges antics. Worth Buying...or id recommend buying the whole collectors box

The Finale of an Adventure Epic.......2007-01-05

I admit to being a die hard fan of the _Sharpe_ film series so I see this not as an individual movie but the last chapter, you might say, of a well loved video book. Without trying to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it, there is joy, resolution, and great sadness as many of the characters' stories, not just Sharpe's, come to a conclusion.

A Poorly Done Conclusion to a Great Series.......2006-08-31

I've much appreciated and enjoyed the BBC's adaptations of Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe Saga.' Unfortunately, the last and most important of all from the original cycle, SHARPE'S WATERLOO, is nowhere near the quality of the previous ones. True, Sean Bean does a terrific job as usual. Same thing for Daragh O'Malley as Patrick Harper, who is now a civilian horse-trader. And guest star Paul Bettany is, needless to say, excellent as the pompous but inept Prince of Orange. Most of the rest of the cast, however, seem over-the-top and histrionics abound (yes, even for a Sharpe's tale). Furthermore, the battle scenes are poorly executed, men drop and die before bullets or cannon fire even reach them. In other scenes soldiers are being cut down with swords but there are no blood or slash marks showing anywhere on their uniforms! Worst of all was the way that the fates of Sergeants Dan Hagman and Harris (played by Brit folkie John Tams and Jason Salkey respectively) were treated. In my opinion, these two were some of the most interesting characters in the BBC's SHARPE series and never received the attention they deserved.

If you are unfamiliar with Cornwell's books and only a viewer of these DVD's, SHARPE'S WATERLOO will leave you with much unanswered. For example, is Jane Sharpe pregnant? Will Richard ever get back the money that she took from him? What becomes of he and Lucille? Although some of these questions are answered in the recent BBC production, SHARPE'S CHALLENGE, it will behoove you to start reading the novels.

Richard Sharpe fights his final battle at Waterloo.......2004-10-14

The cross fans of Bernard Cornwell's maverick British officer Richard Sharpe have had to deal with in these fourteen films have been the depictions of Napoleonic War battles. Because of budget limitations military engagements are played out with dozens of soldiers, rather than the thousands that were usually engaged in the real battles. However, while they are still working with only dozens of soldiers in recreating the Battle of Waterloo in this final installment, there is a concerted effort by director Tom Clegg to pull out all the stops and fake it as well as they can. The result is that "Sharpe's Waterloo" provides a fitting finale to our hero's service in the Duke of Wellington's army.

At the start of this one Napoleon has grown tired of his exile on Elba and returned to France, where his army is flocking to him as he heads for Paris. Sharpe (Sean Bean) is in Normandy with Lucille (Cécile Paoli) when word comes that Boney is back for one last big fight and he has to rejoin Wellington (Hugh Fraser) to see this one through to the end. Harris (Jason Salkey) and Hagman (John Tams) join him as well and even Patrick Harper (Daragh O'Malley) shows up, although he has not re-enlisted. Sharpe is now a leftenant colonel, his position bought for him by Prince William of Orange (Paul Bettany), commander of the Dutch forces in the Allied army, who is glad to have the heroic Sharpe on his staff. The problem is that the prince is an inept military commander at best and a coward at worse, which he has several opportunities to show during the course of the battle.

Meanwhile, Jane Sharpe (Abigail Cruttenden), tired of the slights of polite society because she has abandoned her war hero husband and now is shacked up with Lord Rossendale (Alexis Denisof), wants her lover to kill Sharpe during the confusion of battle. We get graphic proof that Rossendale is not up to confronting Sharpe in a duel when the two show up at the last formal party before the battle. Sharpe no longer wants Jane back (and why Rossendale wants her now that Sharpe's money is all but spent is beyond me as well), he just wants the money. But if there is one thing I have learned from watching Sharpe's adventures it is that it is the rare time indeed that our hero will kill someone he needs to kill.

The conceit of "Sharpe's Waterloo" is that our hero manages to be in the thick of the fighting during the battle. The military situation was that Bonaparte was facing an Anglo-Dutch force of 77,000 under Wellington and a Prussian army of 102,000 commanded by Field Marshal Blucher. Napoleon had 72,000 men and a detached right-wing corps of 33,000 under Marshal Grouchy in between the two opposing forces to prevent them from linking up and crushing his army. On June 16, 1815 Bonaparte defeated the Prussians at Ligny, while at the same time Wellington had held a vital set of crossroads at Quatre Bras against Marshal Ney. Of course, Sharpe and his Chosen Men are there. At that point Napoleon detached Grouchy to keep the Prussians in retreat and away from Wellington at Waterloo while he turned his main strength towards the British.

The next day Wellington's army was drawn up across a small ridge at Mont St John, just south of the village of Waterloo, anchored by a series of strong points, the center one of which was the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, which is where Sharpe and the Prince of Orange end up. The battle is obviously the main action here and there is the whole bit of how the animosity between Sharpe and Rossendale will play out, but the other key part of his one is Sharpe's troubles with "Silly Billy" as the prince comes to be known (there are worst things to call him, which involve a silk stocking filled with something not very nice, a phrase that, ironically, was historically Napoleon's descripton of his foreign minister Talleyrand, a master of diplomatic intrigue). The Prince of Orange repeatedly made mistakes that ended up with entire battalions of troops being destroyed or routed during Waterloo and after serving under a string of titled officers who were worse than butchers our hero finally reaches his breaking point. The straws that break the camel's back will strike fans of the series to the heart while those who know all about the battle will be impressed with how well Cornwell has integrated his characters into its key points.

After La Haye Sainte fell in the center of Wellington's line, the British commander called in all of his reserves. At that point Napoleon ordered the advance of his most feared troops, the Imperial Guard. At the pivotal moment and place on the battlefield, there is Richard Sharpe. One of the nice touches of "Sharpe's Waterloo" is the preoccupation of Sharpe and Harper with getting to see old Boney himself. After all these years and all the miles fought against Napoleon's troops in Portugal, Spain and France, the two old soldiers would just like to see the face of the enemy just once before the end.

If you have ever seen a British square in battle then you know it is a memorable seen. Your most recent opportunity would be the latest remake of "The Four Feathers" with Heath Ledger, but I do remember seeing Sergei Bondarchuk's 1970 film "Waterloo" with the long distance shot of several British squares being attacked by French cavalry. When I watched the mini-series "Napoleon" I could but only imagine what the Sharpe series would have done with that many bodies in all those wonderful costumes. But what "Sharpe's Waterloo" loses in scope it makes up for with the parts played by the characters we have come to know so well. A tip of the cap to Clegg for coming up with a memorable final shot of Sharpe before the credits role for the last time.

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