Hornblower Loyalty & Hornblower Duty

Director Andrew Grieve
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Robert Lindsay, Paul McGann
Rated M
Score 5/6

Hornblower is given a dangerous mission to deliver an emigre French nobleman to a secret rendezvous near Brest while coping with enemy agents in his own ranks

Director Andrew Grieve
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Robert Lindsay, Paul McGann
Rated M
Score 5/6

Admiral Pellew interrupts Hornblower’s wedding reception and tasks him to locate a British ship which has disappeared off the French coast, where Napoleon’s troops are engaged in covert activities.

Okay, the end of the Literary Military Movie Marathon so I suppose its only right that I post another double review. With Loyalty and Duty we probably see the biggest changes in Hornblower’s life both Personally and professionally as his promotion to Captain is finally confirmed and he gets another ship (For those of you watching along at home at the end of Retribution Hornblower is promoted to Captain but by the time peace breaks out in Loyalty he looses his ship and is demoted to Lieutenant) also over the course Loyalty and Duty Hornblower learns a valuable lesson in being economical with the truth. Something he would never have even considered learning earlier in his career.
I am sure that there will be more then a few people interested in learning is that Julia Sawalha was cast as Maria Mason, the daughter of Hornblower’s landlady. Sawalha is better known by some as Lynda Day in the TV series Press Gang and Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous. Sawalha and Ioan Gruffudd seemed to work well together though I got the impression that that the movies particularly with Loyalty that the filmmakers left out some important details about their relationship.
Something that I enjoyed with both Loyalty and Duty was that there was a villain by the name of Wolfe who was portrayed as Lorcan Cranitch that I found easy hate. One of the interesting historical figures that cross paths with Hornblower is Jérôme Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I and Jérôme’s fist wife the American Elizabeth Patterson.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.