Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie Review

“When your back’s against the wall, he’s the one man you’ll want beside you.”

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 9, 2010

Chiseled isn’t a rough enough word to describe English actor Sean Bean’s rugged looks—his face seems to have been outright blasted out of granite with dynamite. He’s a real man’s man and a ladies’ man—guys want to chug a pint with him while swapping tales of bravado, and the womenfolk, well, I’m not about to go into explicit detail. This perhaps explains the almost universal appeal of the long-running Sharpe series of made-for-TV movies, where Bean kicks ass and swashbuckles up a storm as a rifleman in the King’s service, all while looking devastatingly handsome, protecting imperiled lasses and occasionally whipping off his shirt. It’s good old-fashioned no-frills fun, filled with castle sieges and swordfights, busty women, far-flung adventure, and nefarious, mustache-twirling villains. Sharpe films don’t ever leave you with much to ponder, and they’re generally as predictable as they come, but you can’t say that they aren’t entertaining, at least on a base, guns ‘n’ glory, shoot ‘em up, slice ‘em to bits, rescue the maiden sort of level. Sharpe’s Peril—the sixteenth and most recent Sharpe production—is the biggest of Bean’s exploits yet, as his soulful, roguish, sword swinging sharpshooter treks through India on a perilous escort mission.

Sharpe and yet another young lass in need of rescuing...

Peril picks up almost immediately after Sharpe’s Challenge leaves off, with our square-jawed hero looking to get the hell out of India and back home to his farm in provincial Normandy. In typical fashion, Sharpe gets saddled with a last-minute mission—this time, it’s escorting feisty French beauty Marie-Angelique Bonnet (Beatrice Rosen) to her fiancé, Major Joubert (Pascal Langdale), stationed at the hill fortress of Kalimgong. Sharpe and his war buddy sidekick Patrick Harper (Daragh O’Malley) meet up with a unit of soldiers heading in the same direction, and when they’re attacked by bandits on horseback, the unit’s young commander, Ensign Beauclere (Luke Ward Wilkonson), persuades Sharpe to lead the column, if only for a few days. Naturally, the mission gets more complicated and perilous by the hour. When the cavalcade arrives at Kalimgong, they find the garrison collectively murdered—yet Ms. Bonnet’s husband-to- be is nowhere to be found. Heading toward Calcutta, Sharpe’s little rag-tag army, made up of “shirkers and bedlamites, the halt and the mad,” is once again ambushed, this time by the evil Colonel Dragomirov (Velibor Topic), who makes off with Ms. Bonnet and lures Sharpe to a massive opium factory. Backs are stabbed and crosses are doubled, but Sharpe manhandles the situation the only way he knows how: with a grimace and an unsheathed sword.

I think anyone familiar with the Sharpe series would readily admit that the films are unabashedly formulaic. Most of the plots follow similar arcs, and the themes of duty, honor, and courage are recycled and repurposed for each new iteration. But this is almost beside the point. You don’t turn to Sharpe for human insight or high art, though there’s occasionally some pointed criticism about British imperialism; you watch the series to see Sean Bean hack ‘n’ slash through fierce battles in full-on warrior mode. You tune in for romance and adventure writ large in all-caps, for voluptuous virgins in need of saving, for soldierly brotherhood and calm under fire. In this, the Sharpe films deliver in spades, and Peril is no exception. Yes, it sometimes dips into soapy melodrama, and yes, it’s undeniably a made-for-TV movie, but Peril stretches its budget fantastically, its crumbling fortresses and endless vistas of the Indian countryside giving the film a sense of grandeur rarely witnessed on television. I’ve yet to see all of the Sharpe films, but of the handful that I’ve caught on PBS—and now, with Challenge and Peril, on Blu-ray—but of the ones I’ve watched, Peril has been my favorite. It’s certainly the biggest Sharpe production yet, and tonally, it’s a little different from the rest.

Sharpe himself seems a bit more world-weary in Peril. He’s given his life in service of the King—slicing and shooting through the Napoleonic Wars and trudging through the farthest reaches of the British Empire—and now, dammit, he just wants to go home, reunite with his daughter, and do some farming. This last mission is a real killer—things go quickly from bad to worse to worst—but Sharpe, as always, is duty bound, not just unwilling but seemingly physically unable to back down from a fight or abandon the helpless. Sean Bean is terrific here. Unlike more sprightly swashbucklers of yore—say, Errol Flynn—Bean is all heft and brawn. You get the feeling he could take down a mighty oak with one magnificent chop of his sword. He’s also tired, beaten down by countless battles and sick of killing. Bean’s partner in slaughter and chivalry, Irish actor Daragh O’Malley, is just as fun to watch. There’s some unintentional hilarity when he gets bowled over by a bladder stone—for some reason, the way he clutches his crotch and winces is just exceptionally funny to me—but his brothers-in-arms camaraderie with Bean makes for a great onscreen partnership. Peril’s made-for-TV limitations sometimes show through—choppy editing, awkwardly choreographed fights, over-the-top performances by some of the subsidiary actors—but Sharpe and Harper are so inherently likeable as characters that it’s easy to overlook some of the film’s flaws.

Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Whereas all previous Sharpe productions were shot on Super16mm, Sharpe's Peril—with its beefier budget—was filmed on 35mm, resulting in an image with noticeably more detail. It still looks distinctly like a made-for-TV movie, but everything appears tighter and more defined than in previous outings. The improvement over Sharpe's Challenge, also released this week, is immediately apparent, as you can even make out bits of dust clinging to the felt officer's hats. Clothing and skin textures show more resolve, and even the picture's sense of depth and presence is marginally improved in the upgrade to 35mm. As always, color is strictly natural—not much post-production boosting and tweaking here—and while the image occasionally has a slightly washed out quality, especially under the bright mid-day sun, the bright multi-hued Indian attire and British redcoats pop nicely. Skin tones seem natural and hold steady —although you will see General Simmerson intentionally looking as pink as a stuck pig when they find him at the besieged fortress. There are many improvements in picture quality to be found in Sharpe's Peril, but the film's 1080i/AVC encode is unfortunately saddled with a few problems. You'll notice some infrequent motion artifacts, minor ghosting, and a few instances of aliasing, but the biggest offender is the liberal use of DNR, removing much of the grain from the image and smoothing away the finest details in the process. Essentially, it makes Peril look like it was actually shot on video, as there's not much trace of the original 35mm filmic texture. Overall, though, if you can overlook the DNR and the use of 1080i instead of 1080p, Sharpe looks better than ever.

Do note that as it was nearly impossible to capture screenshots of Peril in 1080i, all shots were captured in 720p and do not reflect the full visual quality of this disc.

Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Series fans who were bummed out by the lossy Dolby Digital mix on Sharpe's Challenge should be pleased to see that Peril includes a modestly more capable DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. It's not nearly as bombastic and explosive as you might expect, considering all of the muskets, cannon fire, and galloping horses, but it gets the job done and does sound noticeably better than Challenge. The rear channels get a bit more action this time around, with plenty of outdoorsy ambience—birds, wind, flies buzzing around the bloated bodies of the dead —and even a few well-implemented discrete effects, like bullets pinging through the surround speakers and rocks tumbling in a road-blocking avalanche. Rifles don't thunder as powerfully and convincingly as I'd have liked, and the sound design during the battle sequences is somewhat uninvolving, but it's all more than serviceable for a made-for-TV movie. Dialogue throughout is nicely balanced, and optional subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Making of Sharpe's Peril (SD, 23:31)
Like Sharpe's Challenge, Peril comes with an excellent making-of documentary that takes us on location to the tiny village of Khajuraho, where most of the shooting took place. The doc is stuffed full with interviews from nearly everyone involved, and gives a lot of insight into the challenges of filming in such remote areas, as well as the obvious camaraderie that developed between the cast and crew.

Photo Gallery (1080i, 1:44)
A self-playing gallery with pre-production drawings and on-set stills.

Play Movie Version
The disc also includes a truncated 1 hour 41 minute "movie" cut of the film, though purists, of course, will want to stick with the full-length offering.

Sharpe's Peril Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Firefights, cavalry charges, marches through exotic locales, a busty damsel in distress—Sharpe's Peril may be formulaic, but it's got plenty of swashbuckling action and adventurous Romance- with-a-capital-R. Sales of Challenge and Peril will likely determine whether other Sharpe titles will get the high definition treatment, so if you're a fan of the series, you'd be wise to pick these up. Casually recommended.