The sun may have set on the British Empire, but its influence can still be felt. No, that doesn't mean the Commonwealth Games or other laughable imperial legacies. Compared to the brutal Belgian and French rule of the Congo and Indochina, respectively, the British were relatively benign colonizers (although a billion Indians and Pakistanis might argue otherwise). They were more intent on trading with their subjects than oppressing them, and, for better or worse, left their cultural stamp on every country over which the Union Jack flew.

One of those countries was our very own U.S. of A., which today, ironically, finds itself in much the same predicament in 2002 Afghanistan as Great Britain did in 1875 Sudan. In both cases, a Western power sent off its best, brightest, and baddest soldiers to fight Muslim extremists in a distant land. Of course, there's one fundamental difference: Every day on the news reports, we hear about how much butt we be kickin'. In Shekhar Kapur's new film, The Four Feathers, we see how the British didn't fare so well, and in the process, get an interesting perspective on reckless foreign intervention.

Life is good for Harry Faversham (Heath Ledger). As the son of a decorated general (Tim Pigott-Smith) in Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Royal Army, he's part of England's elite — he's an officer cadet at a top military academy, attends balls with his similarly pampered chums, and is engaged to a fetching debutante, Ethne (Kate Hudson).

However, Harry's upper-crust bubble bursts when it's announced that the Madhi, an Osama-bin-Laden-like cleric leading an army of "Mohammedan fanatics," has attacked a strategic British fort in the Sudan. Harry and his classmates Trench (Michael Sheen), Willoughby (Rupert Penry-Jones), Castleton (Kris Marshall), and Jack (Wes Bentley) are ordered to pack up and ship out. On the eve of his departure, though, Harry starts having second thoughts. He begins to question what business England has in the Sudan in the first place, and abruptly resigns his commission the next morning.

Unlike A.E.W. Mason's more traditionally minded source novel, screenwriters Michael Schiffer and Hossein Amini wisely don't clarify whether it's pre-combat jitters or ideological reservations that make Harry leave the army. But to Trench, Willoughby, Castleton, and Ethne, it's a clear-cut case of cowardice. They send Harry four white feathers as symbols of his lily-liveredness, disintegrating the last shred of honor he has. In order to redeem himself, he hops on the next ship to the Sudan, although it's unclear what an unarmed civilian could do to help what was then the most well-oiled military machine in the world.

Plenty, as it turns out. Once our hero sets foot on the sun-baked soil of North Africa, Four Feathers transforms from a costume drama into an epic adventure. Kapur takes the viewer to a far-off place where civilization meets savagery, and to a long-ago era where soldiers wore bright red coats and fought in orderly lines. One spectacular battle scene highlights the deficiencies of this tactic, particularly when used in an open plain against waves of suicidal cavalry.

But Four Feathers doesn't carry the same antiquated white man's burden of many Victorian-era tales. It's the anti-Zulu — instead of disciplined Brits overcoming overwhelming odds, we see disciplined Brits getting slaughtered because of their unconscionable arrogance. Nowhere is this clearer than when Harry decides to cross the desert — he'd have been baked alive, were it not for the help of a dune-savvy desert nomad, Abou Fatma (Djimon Hounsou). It's a lesson that still resonates today: As much as the "civilized" white man thinks he knows, he all too often gets schooled by the "savages."

Four Feathers is as much a personal journey as it is a cross-continental trek. As well as ace lensman Robert Richardson's cinematography conveys the desolation of the Sudanese desert, it's the actors who add detail to Four Feathers canvas. In the case of Ledger and Bentley, that's fine — each does a splendid job of showing how war quickly makes grizzled men out of fresh-faced boys. The duo also acquit themselves off the battlefield as two sides of a love triangle, although it's hard to understand why they're so smitten with with Hudson's Ethne. The young actress looks like ideal breeding stock for the blue-blooded aristocracy, but her performance is as pale as her alabaster skin. What was all that Almost Famous hype about, anyway?

Sadly, unconvincing romance isn't the only problem Four Feathers has. Kapur overindulges in the eroticization of the exotic, paying too much attention to Honsou and an Alex Wek-lookalike's exposed ebony skin. Monty Python fans may break out in giggle fits during the opening rugby sequence, which feels directly lifted from the boys'-school sequence of The Meaning of Life. But the film's most pervasive problem is its length: At 125 minutes, it comes off as two-thirds of an epic, with most scenes feeling like they've been been edited with a stopwatch. This rushed atmosphere prevents Four Feathers from achieving a sweep akin to Lawrence of Arabia. The end result is a compelling yarn, but not quite a ripping one.