I caught the first of the two new "Hornblower" movies last night on the Arts and Entertainment cable channel. It was a good film as far as made-for-cable-tv goes, fast pacing, decent character development, some new faces and some old ones, and a pretty good series of plot twists as to how the French knew what the British were doing. I plan on catching the second film this evening.
Anybody else watch it?
One criticism I have is that the injured sailors/marines automatically die. I mean, take for example the scene where the sailor opens up the galley and is caught in a fireball. He sprawls around on the deck screaming, burning, kicking his legs, then Hornblower orders the pumps brought out to extinguish the fire in the galley, but we don't see what happens to the injured sailor. Is he dead? Do they tend to him? He just sort of vanishes.
The same thing happens later on, when they're scaling the battery wall and one of the marines gets shot in the back. Nobody seems to move to see if he's alive or dead; they just keep banging against the fortress gate.
Another quirky moment is the opening scene where Hornblower leads a raid against the captured "Hotspur". The British and French go at it, hacking at each other with cutlasses, shooting each other with pistols, and then the cutter arrives alongside and says that peace has been declared between England and France. Everyone just sort of stands around cheering. Not even a "sorry old boy about hacking off your arm. Best of luck in Paris, eh what!"
I kept waiting for Hornblower to tell Styles, after Styles is condemned for accidentally leaving a kitchen oven ajar, "I didn't scourge you for nearly burning down the ship. I scourged you for misrepresenting your capabilities."
