Good production values, but here and as usual, these David-Lean-wannabes Merchant & Ivory tend to be pretentious (The Remains of the Day) when not downright pathetic (Le Divorce).
Good photography and a good recreation of the early XIXth century India, but probably is there where all verosimilitude ends. The hollywoodesque daring escape of the hero when surrounded by a multitude of thugs and his last minute rescue by the requisite cavalry regiment; his appropriate delivery of justice by his own hand or the betrayal by an unsuspecting friend indicate that the whole thing was 99% fiction (one Amazon reviewer even reports that the thugs never existed in reality).
You also have to suspend disbelief on the thugs accepting Pierce Brosnan (or any British officer) as one of their own. Let alone the impossibility of avoiding speaking with an accent when talking a foreign language; think of the colour of the skin (at one point, Brosnan is naked before a thug, who notices nothing) or the many cultural details a foreigner cannot possibly know, which could spell disaster any minute.
Many subplots (the seemingly ominous butler, the comrade-on-arms that tries to seduce the hero's wife and turns out to be something else) lead nowhere, suggesting the producers were trying to fill the 98 minutes with anything. Similarly, the film drags for the first twenty minutes until it starts moving.
The story is also handicapped with a tribute to extrasensorial nonsense: "I've seen your husband in my dreams, and he is in danger" says an Indian character, and the wife acts upon that --apparently reliable-- orientalism.
Summing up: the film is good and moderately entertaining, but it could be much better. They could have omitted the "based on a true story part" since probably the only factual bit was that in 1825 there was a country called India, with British soldiers riding around wearing funny hats.
Good photography and a good recreation of the early XIXth century India, but probably is there where all verosimilitude ends. The hollywoodesque daring escape of the hero when surrounded by a multitude of thugs and his last minute rescue by the requisite cavalry regiment; his appropriate delivery of justice by his own hand or the betrayal by an unsuspecting friend indicate that the whole thing was 99% fiction (one Amazon reviewer even reports that the thugs never existed in reality).
You also have to suspend disbelief on the thugs accepting Pierce Brosnan (or any British officer) as one of their own. Let alone the impossibility of avoiding speaking with an accent when talking a foreign language; think of the colour of the skin (at one point, Brosnan is naked before a thug, who notices nothing) or the many cultural details a foreigner cannot possibly know, which could spell disaster any minute.
Many subplots (the seemingly ominous butler, the comrade-on-arms that tries to seduce the hero's wife and turns out to be something else) lead nowhere, suggesting the producers were trying to fill the 98 minutes with anything. Similarly, the film drags for the first twenty minutes until it starts moving.
The story is also handicapped with a tribute to extrasensorial nonsense: "I've seen your husband in my dreams, and he is in danger" says an Indian character, and the wife acts upon that --apparently reliable-- orientalism.
Summing up: the film is good and moderately entertaining, but it could be much better. They could have omitted the "based on a true story part" since probably the only factual bit was that in 1825 there was a country called India, with British soldiers riding around wearing funny hats.