How a scintillating trilogy like this could be transformed into a lifeless parody of itself by filmmakers is a complete mystery. It is lugubrious, slow and mistakes slapstick for wit. Waugh would have been appalled by this work. He was a nasty man in private life--a friend of Randolph Churchill whose boorish behavior was legendary--but he had high literary standards. Daniel Craig, incidentally, does not do humor well. The first review on this site must have been written by the movie publicist. The actress who plays his first wife is as wooden as Craig himself -- zero chemistry there -- and there is a supporting cast who clearly didn't have their heart in any of this. A total waste of time, so don't bother. I hope I have made myself clear in padding this out to the full 10 lines required. Left to me, I would have kissed it off with a simple, "No, don't think so. Take your dog for a walk instead."

Desperate to find some cause to hitch his waggon to,Guy Crouchback, introverted,middle - class,Catholic,is a man determined to find honour and redemption in war.To assist him in this effort he commits himself whole - heartedly to the Halberdiers,an obscure but "superior" British regiment which after years of idleness suddenly finds itself confronted with the realities of modern warfare. Actually proving a rather good and popular officer,he fights a losing battle against the tide of cynicism,opportunism and political in - fighting,corruption,self - aggrandisement and general rottenness from his contemporaries,a victim of their jibes,their genial or sometimes not so genial contempt and condescension. Bloodied,appalled and bruised by what one of his colleagues calls "the whirligig of war",he gets the chance to "do the decent thing" by marrying his ex - wife,Virginia, who is pregnant by an odious fellow - officer,thus,by proxy,continuing the Crouchback line which dates back to mediaeval times. When Virginia Crouchback is killed in an air raid,Guy comes home and sees "his" son for the first time. Awkwardly,clumsily,he says to the boy,"I'm your father" as the camera cranes up and we leave the two of them to a hopefully happier future. Adapting Waugh's marvellous trilogy of war novels for television was no mean task,and leaving aside any petty intellectual snobbery from old school Waugh admirers who might baulk at his masterpiece being sliced up and presented as popular entertainment no matter how well done,it must be said "Sword of Honour" is something of a triumph. Mr D.Craig is quite excellent as Guy and conveys well the gradual change in his character as his wartime experiences have an increasing effect on him. Mr L.Phillips - a man whom I would normally walk a mile to avoid on the screen - is sensitive and moving as his elderly father,a man unshakable in his beliefs and quietly indomitable in his courage.Miss M.Dodds as the flighty Virginia gives the best performance,displaying the easy charm existing in a total moral vacuum but somehow fatally attractive. The production values are high,the battle scenes well above par for a TV production and,in line with the original,the TV adaptation takes on a very bleak aspect towards the end. By giving legitimacy to Virginia's son,Guy redeems himself in a way that he signally failed to do in combat. Channel 4 is to be congratulated.

I might sound blunt here but this is a movie recommended to watch only if intoxicated with illegal substances. Otherwise you will either fall asleep or look for a victim to get rid of your frustration. A typical "a'la Stephen King" failure trying to make a movie out of a book. it's like when you listen to a CD book and the narrator is trying very hard to get the listeners attention with a poor try in narrating acting. What did the actors think when they read the script or did they just read the book and trust that the director could get this on the screen by magic.Don't waste your time on this one.

Like almost all of Waugh's novels, this is a lightly fictionalised version of incidents in his own life. Apart from the early one's, they were intended to advocate the austere and serious form of Catholicism that Waugh had converted to. But what makes him such a compelling storyteller is that he mixed comedy (light as well as grotesque) with the serious points, so that one never knows quite how a story will turn out. Waugh's life alternated between melancholy and farce - and that is how his fiction comes across as well. Maybe that's why when I read his novels and see the adaptations, I find myself nodding in agreement. Yes, that is what life is like ! I thought this version of Sword of Honour very good, but oddly structured. It started as three novels, so I would have thought it would make most sense as three segments, broadcast weekly. Instead we have two long "movies", which to the casual viewers must seem a bit jumbled.There are some superb acting performances here, though I found Daniel Craig as the hero a bit blank. Perhaps that is because, like Charles Ryder in Brideshead, the story is not really about him but about the people he meets and remembers in extraordinary circumstances. Previous reviewers have said that his wife Virginia comes across as very silly and unlikeable, but I disagree. I thought the actress (Megan Dodds - the end credits were so small that I couldn't read her name so I had to look on this site !) gave a very subtle and sophisticated performance. Really she is a woman who has never needed to think seriously about anything before, but the war experience forces her to. She becomes a Catholic - I think for Waugh this is one of the most important parts of the story.This is a worthy successor to the celebrated TV version of Brideshead Revisited, though I wanted it to go on longer ! Unlike Brideshead (which was stretched out to an absurd 13 hours), this trilogy of stories could have gone on much longer, and I still would have been absorbed.