VHS : Sharpe's Justice [1997]

Rating: - What did Sharpe do during the break in the Napoleon Wars?
If there is one thing that I have learned from the first dozen adventures of Major Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean), maverick British officer from the Napoleonic Wars, it is that the only time our hero takes direct and final action against an enemy is when the script is not based on one of Bernard Cornwell's novels, which is the case with "Sharpe's Justice." In the previous outing, "Sharpe's Revenge," his target was the French spymaster Major Ducos, who had framed Sharpe for stealing Napoleon's treasure. But as Sergeant Harper (Daragh O'Malley) pointed out, Ducos was only the first half of Sharpe's revenge. Waiting fearfully in their bed back in England are Sharpe's errant wife, Jane (Abigail Cruttenden), and her lover, the impoverished Lord Rossendale (Alexis Denisof). However, even though Napoleon has been defeated and is mulling his fate on the island of Elba, Sharpe is still a serving office in His Majesty's Army and is posted to Yorkshire where the Mill workers are about to revolt.

This thirteenth of the fourteen Sharpe films is a strange one, and not just because Sharpe is in England and away from Wellington and the War. While it does touch on the wretched conditions that Hagman (John Tams) and the other soldiers of Wellington's army were confronted with when they returned home, it has a lot of soap opera elements. It turns out that Sharpe is from Yorkshire and the orphanage where he was raised is still in operation and Sally Bunting (Karen Meagher) who took care of him when he was a wee lad has some rather important news to relate about Sharpe's family. Then there is Truman (Philip Glenister), who was Sharpe's friend when they were in the orphanage, if you count fighting all the time as friendship.

Of course it would not be a Sharpe story if there was not some friction between our hero and some idiot officer, and this time around it is young Wickham (Douglas Henshall), who fancies himself quite a swordsman, a skill he developed safe in England. We all know that there is a difference between dueling in front of lords and ladies versus swordplay to kill or be killed, but Wickham will have to learn that on his own. There is intrigue going on with the mills to complicate everything, especially after the troops Sharpe commands disobey his orders and start slaughtering mill workers, and it is up to Sharpe, Harper and Hagman to help set things to rights.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of "Sharpe's Justice" is that the script by Patrick Harbinson (with additional material by John Tams) stripes away the last thoughts of affection we might have towards Jane Sharpe. It was not bad enough that she was persuaded to abandon her husband on the Continent, clean out his bank account, and be seduced by a penniless nobleman, this time around she decides to add insult to injury by being repentant about her actions. Ironically, Rossendale thinks more highly of Sharpe than does his own wife, so I think it is clear that the bed she had made is going to be a lonely one for her in the end. But the way she is presented in this penultimate film of the Sharpe series that is far less than she deserves.

There is only the last adventure, "Sharpe's Waterloo" to come in this fine series. It makes sense that the makers of this series would see a need to give more of a sense of the brief peace that existed while Napoleon was exiled on Elba. Next time around Wellington will face Napoleon for the final time and I have no doubt that Sharpe and Rossendale will somehow end up crossing paths on the battlefield. I will be sad to see the series end, but I know there are all those Cornwell novels out there to enjoy.

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Rating: - not the best of this series...
It seems that without grand battle scenes, there really isn't much of Sharpe left... Sharpe's Justice gives us a rather predictable story where annoying Rossindale has Sharpe posted to the North to get him out of the way, then ends up inheriting an estate just up the road. The obligatory corrupt gentry want Sharpe to suppress all the poor but honest factory workers; there is a very lame subplot involving a long-lost relative; the obligatory sex scene is with Lady Anne (again).

This is really just Sharpe-by-numbers and Sean Bean looks bored throughout. Abigail Cruttenden is the poorly written Jane, who alternates between being unpleasant and miserable without ever really convincing as either. The corrupt gentry are straight out of central casting, with a self-made millionaire who we assume is nice but is actually a baddie, and an upright and mildy snotty aristocrat who's really a good bloke. The downtrodden village folk are just a mob of extras who gurn unconvincingly to portray 'misery' and 'despair' whenever the camera's on them; they get no character development whatsoever, and it's difficult to care at all whether Sharpe sticks with the local gentry or helps the workers. Rossindale is such a wusser that it's hard to see why Sharpe's finding it so difficult to recover his lost fortune, let alone why Sharpe has to say 'I want my money back' no less than 4,862 times in the course of the programme. What's more, there seems to be no reason for Harper to be there at all apart from to provide comic relief...

As is usually the case when the TV series strays too far from the books, there just isn't enough of a plot to keep the show going for two hours. Such story as there is is rather contrived - how do we get Sharpe into trouble and out of it again in a couple of hours? It's passably entertaining, but the usual juxtaposition of roughty-toughty Sharpe with a bunch of effeminate, drunken fops is pretty weak as the focus for an entire programme. In fact, this is really the problem; the absence of a battle to base the show around (or indeed a decent plot of any kind) means that stuff that's usually consigned to subplots - Sharpe makes a posh officer look daft; Lady Anne machinates endlessly and pointlessly; there is an irritatingly simplistic opposition of good!workers/soldiers and bad!aristocrats/officers; Jane floats about being pretty, stupid, nagging, and cunning in turn; Harper pulls a wench of some description - is forced on to centre stage. And, unfortunately, it's not enough to fill it.

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Rating: - The war being over it�s homeward we�re bound*
The scene shifts to Northern England where Sharpe has been sent, supposedly to sort out some malcontents who are burning mills and breaking engines. However the plot thickens to involve Rossendale and Jane, a long lost brother, the obligatory sneering fop for Sharpe to cross swords with, and a mill owner who is not all he seems. You may miss the grand battle scenes but this tale looks at the other side of the coin - what happens when an expensive war is over. The soldiers have to return to the real world, leaving their campaign wives behind, and coming face to face with the downtrodden, suffering masses at home. I like it for just that reason. And they still manage some handsome horses, a snog or two, fights and chases and buxom barmaids. *John Tams - more power to his elbow. He gets storyline credits and a romantic interest for Hagman on this as well.