Very disappointing...

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Desperate to find some cause to hitch his waggon to,Guy Crouchback, introverted,middle - class,Catholic,is a man determined to find honour and redemption in war.To assist him in this effort he commits himself whole - heartedly to the Halberdiers,an obscure but "superior" British regiment which after years of idleness suddenly finds itself confronted with the realities of modern warfare. Actually proving a rather good and popular officer,he fights a losing battle against the tide of cynicism,opportunism and political in - fighting,corruption,self - aggrandisement and general rottenness from his contemporaries,a victim of their jibes,their genial or sometimes not so genial contempt and condescension. Bloodied,appalled and bruised by what one of his colleagues calls "the whirligig of war",he gets the chance to "do the decent thing" by marrying his ex - wife,Virginia, who is pregnant by an odious fellow - officer,thus,by proxy,continuing the Crouchback line which dates back to mediaeval times. When Virginia Crouchback is killed in an air raid,Guy comes home and sees "his" son for the first time. Awkwardly,clumsily,he says to the boy,"I'm your father" as the camera cranes up and we leave the two of them to a hopefully happier future. Adapting Waugh's marvellous trilogy of war novels for television was no mean task,and leaving aside any petty intellectual snobbery from old school Waugh admirers who might baulk at his masterpiece being sliced up and presented as popular entertainment no matter how well done,it must be said "Sword of Honour" is something of a triumph. Mr D.Craig is quite excellent as Guy and conveys well the gradual change in his character as his wartime experiences have an increasing effect on him. Mr L.Phillips - a man whom I would normally walk a mile to avoid on the screen - is sensitive and moving as his elderly father,a man unshakable in his beliefs and quietly indomitable in his courage.Miss M.Dodds as the flighty Virginia gives the best performance,displaying the easy charm existing in a total moral vacuum but somehow fatally attractive. The production values are high,the battle scenes well above par for a TV production and,in line with the original,the TV adaptation takes on a very bleak aspect towards the end. By giving legitimacy to Virginia's son,Guy redeems himself in a way that he signally failed to do in combat. Channel 4 is to be congratulated.

Recap: Guy Crouchback joins the war effort during World War 2, an idealistic quest to join the forces of good in the fight against evil. But his efforts is not rewarded, he never has any chance to join any real fighting, circumstances always prevent it. Instead he finds himself in the middle of an army full of cowards, incompetents and a few outright evil men. They of course reap the fortunes of war, promotions and fame, but never Crouchback. His war is just an endless list of transfers and an hopeless but noble quest for righteousness.Comments: Really a miniseries, based on a novel, or apparently a series of novels, that has been put on a DVD together to find a very long movie. Never read the novels, so I can't comment on how the movie compares to the books. But I can comment on the movie, and I can't really figure it out. Does it want to be a comedy, or a dramatic comment on wars as such. I think it really tries to be both, but because of it accomplishes neither.Too many characters are too incompetent, too cowardly or simply too mad to really take seriously. And if a score of characters can't be taken seriously, how could any message or implication in the story really be taken seriously. At the same time Crouchback seem to get in to quite a few hotspots in the war, but nothing really ever happens to or around him. So it is certainly not anything like an action. There is an implication about the madness of war, but what doesn't get lost in the lack of seriousness really get lost in the inaction of the movie. The message may be noble and important, but more than three hours are too much time to make just one statement, and when nothing other happens it gets dull.A few known actors and faces, but Daniel Craig is certainly the most known of them, mostly for his work after this movie. Can't really say he shines in this one, but he doesn't disappoint either.The movie isn't that bad really, but far too long. Therefore nothing I can recommend.5/10

I was unaware of this film adaptation of Waugh's trilogy until today's showing on British freeview TV, and missing the first half hour, also missed the chance to record it to DVD. Drat. Until I saw it. Very pretty production by Channel 4 TV and Talkback, made some 8 years back, before Daniel Craig became a superstar.I've read and reread a lot of Waugh but believed Sword of Honour to be an inexplicably stolid, inaccessibly unreadable work, so big, so long, so dull. Brideshead was the beginning of the end, the trilogy was the end writ large.Until I found the BBC radio adaptation from 1974, over 11 hours rather than this film's 4. After a few hours I began to see the early Waugh wrapped inside the less obviously satirical wrappings, his humour and gravity. The genius, in short.They don't make them like Waugh any more, nor do they make the people; the 1974 recording was made in time to catch many authentic sounding voices from the era, and some very fine acting. A gem which I recommend to any Waugh fans.This film seems to be, probably, a rather adroit shot at a script which condenses a huge tome to a few hours, but the vowels are comprehensive school, Craig is hopelessly wrong, and there are but a few flashes of sharp observation and very little wit. But the audio version is available on the internet, and of course the pictures are better.

'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.