Sharpe's Peril

Woo-hoo, maybe I will actually catch up on my blogging... :) Here's the summary of Sharpe's Peril from the Masterpiece Classic website:

Colonel Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean, The Lord of the Rings) may have a nose for mischief, but his only interest now is returning to England. But before he goes, he is prevailed on for one last, seemingly straightforward duty — safe transport of some property across central India. The "property" in question turns out to be Marie-Angelique (Beatrice Rosen, 2012), who Sharpe quickly pegs as petulant, spoiled and selfish. The journey, through more than 600 miles of hostile territory, will prove to be riddled with surprises and rebellion and bring Sharpe, his comrade-in-arms Patrick Harper (Daragh O'Malley) and their ragtag troops into a dark conspiracy and one climactic, perilous battle. Sharpe's Peril is based on the characters created by novelist Bernard Cornwell.

This installment in the l-o-n-g running Sharpe film series picks up shortly after the events of Sharpe's Challenge (my review). Sharpe and his friend Patrick Harper are still trying to get home from India so they can officially retire. Given that this is Sharpe's life accomplishing that is a lot more difficult than it sounds. *sigh* I have to think that Sharpe must sometimes really regret saving Wellington's life back in the day, since it's commissions or recommendations from the duke that are always getting him into trouble. ;-)

I'm not going to go through the story in great detail, honestly I just don't care enough about this series. This series has been going on for so long every film follows pretty much the same essential pattern. Sharpe finds himself on some unwanted mission, discovers traitors, has love/hate relationships with every woman he meets, etc. and etc. While I missed the presence of a charismatic villain (like Toby Stephens in Sharpe's Challenge), since I'd never seen this movie before it was interesting to see a a new storyline and new (to the series) faces in the cast.

Raza Jaffrey plays Lance Naik Singh, an honorable native soldier who stops the attempted rape of an Indian woman when Sharpe & Co. reach a fortress that's been mysteriously ambushed. Jaffrey played Zafar Younis in seasons 5 and 6 of the British spy drama MI-5. I have to mention Luke Ward-Wilkinson who played Beauclere, not because he's a familiar face but because he looked like he was about ten. It was very random. He did a pretty decent job playing a boy trying to be a man, wanting desperately to follow in his less-than-honorable father's soldiering footsteps. I did like seeing how Sharpe sort of took the young soldier under his wing (good job Sean Bean! *g*). Steve Spiers is a more familiar face - he played the soldier Wormwood, and he's appeared in everything from Doctor Who to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Velibor Topic (isn't that a great name?) plays the treacherous Dragomirov. I recognized him from his appearance in Kingdom of Heaven as Almaric.

Well that's that...I promise to do my best to return to more inspired Masterpiece blogging now that I've slogged my way through the two Sharpe entries in this season. ;-)