The Cornish military captain, now a member of Parliament, is drawn into the war with France while his son falls in with smugglers. Historical drama, starring John Bowe and Mel Martin, and featuring a young Ioan Gruffudd in one of his earliest roles.
Reviews
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
I really looked forward to seeing this movie, but what disappointment and a waste of time it turned out to be.Of all the feature films which follow a great series, this has got to be one of the worst I've ever seen. It is so disjointed as to be utterly tedious, as is the plot. Miscasting abounds, and both acting and dialogue are dead and lifeless as is the direction. There is very little, indeed none, of the fire of the original characters on display here. In short it is a complete disaster.Winston Graham is a wonderful writer, ergo I can't imagine or believe that he wrote the screenplay for this drivel.
We were left waiting for the next sequence. The VHS tape started to crackle and we knew there was no more! What happens next? Surely they aren't going to leave us up in the air like this! The actors who played Poldark and Sir George could have been played by twins. We couldn't tell them apart. The scenery and costumes are lovely, but the "gentlemen" are all like cardboard cutouts. The flaming red hair of Clowence made for some spectacular photography, but she didn't have a range of expression. The most interesting character was Mrs. Poldark, full of fire and intelligence, and you wondered how she and the stuffed shirt Poldark ever got together! Like eating popcorn, it left us empty.
The old Poldark afficiandos regard this as a blasphemy. But I've noticed some reviews on Amazon that are a little less anorak and a little more objective, some of which are fairly favourable, one or two very much so. On its own terms it does have flaws. The book on which it is based is more an old man's ruminations than a story and any adaptation was going to run into problems. That said, the cast is great (the much-missed originals might well have floundered with their mannered performances, okay in the seventies but ... well ...), the locations and design are quite stunning and the story sort of lopes along a bit erratically but there are some good scenes. Laxton directs with finesse, in my view, and the script is more elegantly poetic than I think its audience was expecting. It does end rather suddenly but this was probably meant as a pilot to a series. On reflection, the stories are resolved, in a way, but leave something to the viewer to work out. Probably far too ambitious considering its natural constituency and in the end, possibly a compromise between something new and pandering to the old. It couldn't win. But it's actually a good piece of work. Congratulations all round.
This very poorly done production jumps from scene to scene and appears like many parts must have been cut out to make it fit into the scheduled time(sound familiar?). Then, it ends abruptly, leaving all the story lines up in the air. It looks like this might have been parts of a mini series that was never completed. Don't expect this to compare with the original Poldark series. A real waste of some very good talent.