"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is quite an epic production, and notorious for the number of horses killed in the battle scenes. Max Steiner's score complements the action perfectly. Director Michael Curtiz brings out another energetic performance from Flynn, although his character here lacks the depths of the heroes of "Captain Blood" or "The Dawn Patrol". Patric Knowles, who played Will Scarlett in Flynn's "Adventures of Robin Hood", is Flynn's brother David Niven is his sidekick and Henry Stephenson, Donald Crisp, and Nigel Bruce are the top brass. Opposite Flynn is, naturally, Olivia deHavilland, without whom Flynn would be lost. Flynn leads a company of British lancers in skirmishes with the local rajah, the villainous Surat Khan - you can tell he's the villain because of his evil goatee - and a betrayal and a massacre leads to a mission of vengeance, which reaches its climax in Tennyson's Valley of Death in the Crimea. This setting had been picked up and dusted off after 1935's "Lives of a Bengal Lancer", and would be recreated for "Gunga Din" a few years later, with the same locations and similar plots. The story starts in Southern California - or rather, Northern India - on the outskirts of the British Empire. adventure film of 1936, one of the best of the breed. Basically, this is a quintessential Warner Bros. It has everything to do with Errol Flynn, Olivia deHavilland, Michael Curtiz, and Max Steiner. It has nothing to do with the real Crimean War, the Battle of Balaclava, or the Charge of the Light Brigade.
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