THE FOUR FEATHERS

Heath Ledger, with his poet’s frown, takes on the tricky role of Harry Feversham, a Royal Cumbrian officer who is branded a coward and then takes off for the African desert, going native in sympathy with the very ”primitives” his former comrades are there to suppress. At times, we seem to be watching a 19th-century version of The John Walker Lindh Story, and the historical fluke is enhanced by the weird anonymity of Ledger’s performance: The moment he shows up in his bedraggled, Lawrence of Haight-Ashbury guise, he all but disappears as an actor. The Four Feathers starts out well, but then it seems to restart, over and over again.