Sharpe's Waterloo | 
| Director: Tom Clegg
Actors: Sean Bean, Daragh O'malley, Abigail Cruttenden, Alexis Denisof, Cecile Paoli
Studio: Bfs Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $9.66
You Save: $10.32 (52%)
New (13) Used (6) from $9.66
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 53035
Format: Color, Dvd, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: BFSD98646D
ISBN: 0773316469
UPC: 066805916465
EAN: 9780773316461
ASIN: B00005BGRV
Theatrical Release Date: August 26, 2006
Release Date: May 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Bfs Ent & Multimedia Limi Release Date: 04/24/2001 Run time: 100 minutes
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Fitting Finale December 16, 2008
kristin724 (New Jersey USA)
Alrighty folks! Here we are. The end of the end. Really, I mean it! Well... now we know there's more Sharpe, but in 1997, Waterloo was it. It's a fitting place to break the Napoleonic series based on the novels by Bernard Cornwell.
Now that Napoleon has escaped Elba, Sharpe (Sean Bean) has his French lover Lucille's (Cecile Paoli) blessing to fight again. Now a Lieutenant Colonel on the Prince of Orange's (Paul Bettany) staff, Sharpe is joined by ever loyal Patrick Harper (Daragh O'Malley), and Rifleman Harris (Jason Salkey) and Daniel Hagman (John Tams) for this last hurrah. Sharpe's estranged wife Jane (Abigail Cruttenden) wants a piece of the grand action for herself, even convincing her spineless lover Lord Rossendale (Alexis Denisof) to kill Sharpe. Amid the battles and the balls, all of allied Europe is converging on Waterloo. Sharpe's reason to fight, however, is a modest one. Just once he wants to see Napoleon for himself.
I've said before that Sharpe episodes tend to pack a lot into their near two hour running time. But the Battle of Waterloo is perhaps as big as one can get. Director Tom Clegg and writer Charles Wood expertly blend the private battles and internal storylines of the Sharpe series amid complex historic action. In such a well documented and oft studied event, it might be tough to find a crevice for Sharpe, but his place amid the battle is realistic and believable. Everyone has his or her moment, and only a feeling of pride trails Waterloo. We've been with the Chosen Men from the beginning- twenty two hours from Portugal to Spain and France. Now the viewer can't help but cheer as Sharpe marches into the sunset. Although the previous episodes have always ended with Sharpe's march away from the camera (and we know Challenge now follows) Waterloo's concluding scene is perfection.
If you don't have the complete edition, Waterloo is available individually or in a collector's set with previous episodes Revenge and Justice. I've said it before, but the three together may be some of Sharpe's finest. You can forgive the original retrospective of Justice when it's taken with this hurrah. Of course, I would have loved to see some behind the scenes material or reflections from the cast and crew beyond the compilation Sharpe The Legend. I wasn't that into Sharpe when it was first on television. I was reading Hornblower at the time, so it's strange that Sharpe ended, ITV began producing Hornblower, and now they refuse to make more Hornblower and have returned to Sharpe with Challenge, released in 2006 and Peril, coming this fall. As beautiful a conclusion Waterloo was, I wonder why they stopped making shows in 97? Why not go on? There's more material from Cornwell still to be had.
Whether it was Bean's choice or a production decision to conclude, everyone involved in Waterloo is up to the task of the finale. Oft underrated, Sean Bean has perhaps never been better. The entire cast seems bittersweet, from the in jokes between Sharpe and Harper to the last hurrah of Hagman and Harris. Everyone has his shining moment and some get their just due, ahem Jane. Paul Bettany is delicious as the corrupt Prince of Orange, and the banter between Bettany and Bean is delightful, just the right level between the carnage of Waterloo. It took Sharpe's production team about ten episodes to nail its own value and style, but the Waterloo theater here is the best battle shown in Sharpe. I can't recall viewing another recreation of Waterloo that's better. We've got our regular Sharpe music of course, but again the crew has found battle worthy compositions to accompany the lofty visuals.
Unfortunately there is one downside to Waterloo. You can't just pop in the video any time you wish. Alone, it's a fine television production, sure, but Waterloo can only be fully appreciated with the previous thirteen episodes behind it. If you haven't started watching Sharpe yet, what are you waiting for?
Good historical adventure! April 20, 2008
ChrisP (Portland, Oregon, USA)
The story is very true to the book, always a Good Thing to the readers who wish continuity. It would have been better with a "cast of thousands" for the actual battles, but budgets being what they are, ah well...
Amongst all the actors that could have been chosen, S.Bean does a magnificent job, even my wife likes the tales! I heartily recommend this title.
 Three-and-a-half stars for climactic "Waterloo" April 23, 2007
Scott Schiefelbein (Portland, Oregon United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Phew! The fourteen-episode Richard Sharpe series of BBC adaptations of Bernard Cornwell's novels is one heck of a production. Taken as a whole, this series deserves five stars without question. This is old-fashioned storytelling with a lean budget, and for the most part it works splendidly . . . except for "Sharpe's Gold," of course.
But "Sharpe's Waterloo" just doesn't quite work as well, and the problem is one of scope. Most of the other Sharpe episodes were severely scaled-down versions of Bernard Cornwell's novels. But it was more charming than jarring to see a handful of Riflemen and redcoats comprise the entire South Essex, and thanks to skillful camerawork the episodes were plenty thrilling.
But with Waterloo, things are different. Waterloo is not an invented Bernard Cornwell tale, but a real clash of 300,000 soldiers in a small area. Further, it is one of the defining battles of Western Civilization, and its echoes are still felt today. While the BBC has clearly given the filmmakers a larger budget, "Sharpe's Waterloo" nevertheless comes across as amateurish. Others have invoked Ted Turner's wonderful production of "Gettysburg" - "Sharpe's Waterloo" does not measure up in either story or grandeur, and the battle demands better.
The story opens with Sharpe comfortably living in Normandy with Lucille, but that idyll is soon shattered by Napoleon's escape from Elba. Sharpe promises Lucille that he will not fight, but everyone knows that is a lie. Soon, Sharpe is attached to the staff of William of Orange, a Dutch idiot who is about to get thousands of men killed. Sharpe and "Silly Billy" are even more at odds than oil and water, and this relationship gets ugly quickly.
Sharpe is rejoined in uniform by Hagman and Harris, but while Sergeant Major Harper has returned from Ireland, he has not reelisted. Instead, he makes the conscious decision to hang back even though he is often in harm's way - it's a jarring decision for the filmmakers, for those of us who are familiar with Harper from the novels have a hard time picturing him standing to one side while a battle rages five feet away. Both Hagman and Harris get small moments in the sun in their final Sharpe movie, and that's a well-deserved honor.
But even though the movie has a few captions trying to tell the audience what is going on, the battle is never really explained and one is left wondering just what happened. Again, Waterloo deserves better.
The one thing that "SW" gets right much better than any of the previous Sharpe BBC episodes is the human cost of war. While we have seen plenty of soldiers killed in this series, "SW" contains many more close-ups of mangled bodies, sobbing soldiers, and Sharpe shows much more emotion than he usually does when confronting the death of the anonymous rankers.
If you have watched the Sharpe series so far, there's no way you're going to avoid "Sharpe's Waterloo." With luck, you will enjoy it more than I did - I find it fine, but I wanted so much for it to be great. And that is a disappointment.
Pretty Good, BUT February 11, 2007
William Marks IV (State College, PA)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
OK, this was a pretty good installment of the sharpe series. However, like all of them could have been better with a higher budget...Maybe one day it wouldnt be a bad idea to re-do this series as a two or 3 part feature film like lord of the rings---juice it up alot...ANYWAY, they did the best with what they had. Sean Bean was great- I loved his curse words...very original... Paul Bettany did a great job as the douche bag prince of orange...and the two gay guys did a great job portraying two gay lover/soldiers/tag team...It was really cute how they died holding eachothers hand. I was happy to see Sharpe finally got to see Boney and that he persevered through the prince of oranges antics. Worth Buying...or id recommend buying the whole collectors box
The Finale of an Adventure Epic January 5, 2007
M. W. Young (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I admit to being a die hard fan of the _Sharpe_ film series so I see this not as an individual movie but the last chapter, you might say, of a well loved video book. Without trying to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it, there is joy, resolution, and great sadness as many of the characters' stories, not just Sharpe's, come to a conclusion.
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