Import Week 2025, Day 4: Sword of Honour, Or Is That Soldier?

This is one I've been planning to cover here for a long time, it's actually one of the discs that inspired me to make this site.  But as you'll see, it required a lot of extra work, so I kept putting it off.  Import Week 2025, Day 4's the day, though, so here we go!  I'm talking about 2001's Sword of Honour, an epic (in every sense of the word) television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's trilogy of novels: Men at Arm, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, published between 1952 and 1961.

It consists of two feature-length films made by Channel 4 in the UK, recreating Waugh's harrowing, and sometimes bizarrely ironic, experiences during WWII.  It's shot in various countries with a massive cast, exploding planes and tanks, etc.  This is not your traditional stage-bound Masterpiece Theater, though its intelligence and literary merits are just as strong.  It blends Waugh's famous humor - some scenes are truly wild - with a truly bleak examination of the cruelty of war.  It stars Daniel Craig, who I haven't historically been a huge fan of, but he's perfect here, as a sad, naive but never sentimental idealist whose ideals are steadily rebuked by an endless procession of absurd bureaucrats and an the desperate criminals who try to eke out a life under their thumb.

So Acorn released this as a 2-disc DVD set in 2006.  It came as two amary cases in a nice little slipcase.  But the content of the discs themselves was a little underwhelming, so I took to the internet to hunt for an international upgrade.  And it turns out this had been released on blu-ray in France!  It was put out by a smaller label called Fusion, which made the curious decision to change the title to Soldier of Honor (though it still says Sword on-screen).  And while, as you'll see, this may not be the grand HD experience one might be hoping for, it is an unqualified upgrade, and I'm glad I got it.

a scene only in the full-length French cut.

Especially since it turns out this is a longer cut!  It's a good nine to ten minutes longer, and no it's not a PAL vs. NTSC thing (both discs are NTSC).  I've synced them up and gone through them simultaneously, and the US version is definitely missing footage that appears on this French disc.  I can only guess, but presumably what we got here is a trimmed commercial television edit, cut down to accommodate broadcast schedules and ads, in the same way some Masterpiece Theater programs like the 2007 Northanger Abbey got mistreated.  Because I've itemized all the changes, and none of it is for censorship reasons or anything.  The bloodiest bits are all intact, and neither cut has any nudity.  Here's a full break-down of all the differences so you can see for yourself.

The following time codes are based on the US DVD:

0:00 The differences start right from the jump, with the blu-ray opening on Craig in a hotel room, looking at a framed photograph and then bagging it in a pre-credits scene excised from the DVD.

4:18 The DVD has on-screen text "Bellamy's Pall Mall" over the shot of a car pulling up.  The same shot is on the blu-ray but without this text (presumably cutting down on foreign ext for French audiences).  But then the blu-ray has a whole series of shots where Craig gets out and surveils the club, then goes inside and goes inside where he's stopped by the doorman ("excuse me, sir, but are you a member?").  They have a back and forth exchange, after which Craig goes upstairs, only then cutting to the shot of Craig writing a letter which is what the DVD cut to after the car.

4:47 Cuts out some of the dialogue with Craig and his father.  They both start with the father telling Craig "you're far too old" to join the army, but the blu-ray has a bit where he asks him, "can you seriously see yourself sprinting..." which the DVD clips out. 

6:30 The DVD snips out some establishing footage of Craig and his father crossing the street and into the bar parking lot

7:30 Cuts out part of the conversation about how the captain's regiment doesn't "do things in the ordinary army style," which is a pretty important precursor of things to come.  The DVD rejoins the blu when the captain says, "if you're really serious, I'll see if the thing can be managed."

16:40 Cuts out most of Virginia's reaction (i.e. putting her arm on the couch) when Craig leaves.

17:00 About half of the mugging rescue is cut, with the victim exclaiming "it's the second time I've been robbed this week" etc.

17:18 A shot of the military vehicle being let through the gate has been cut.  On the other hand, the blu is missing the on-screen text, "Southsand-On-Sea."

20:20 The blu opens with the troupe wandering up the road, lost.  The DVD only cuts in when the dialogue starts.  And it trims off the end of the shot, too.

23:17 The DVD removes shots of the soldiers in the room exchanging glances after the Captain leaves the room.

26:56 Cuts out Craig's line, "very good of the Brigadiere, I thought."

27:57 A quick cut of Craig walking up the hotel hallway.

28:36 Removes a whole scene of Craig first walking into Virginia's room, walking around, and exchanging dialogue.  "I didn't join the army just to become more attractive to women," etc.

30:27 Cuts out Apthorpe realizing Craig has hung up the phone on him.

34:34 Cuts out a the end of Craig on the train and beginning of him driving up to the house.  More noticeably, it also cuts out most of the conversation between Craig and the operator over the phone.  Then it trims a couple seconds of him and Apthorne running through the woods and walking up the road.

50:45 Another slug, this one reading "H.O.O. HQ London" is only on the DVD.

52:22 Cuts out Craig saluting after receiving his orders, and also trims a handful of frames off various shots of Craig exploring his new base.

56:30 Another title card: "Station Hotel Glasgow."

56:59 Cuts out a moment where Gustav teases the bartender about his tip.

1:01:20 Trims a second or two off the guests walking into the hotel.

1:03:35 Cuts out Craig's reaction before cutting to the troops in the stream.  Then cuts out a shot of the officers waving to the troops after the line, "I think plan B is called for, sir."

1:07:50 Cuts out two shots of Craig and McTavish after Craig's warning about him is ignored.

1:12:25 Cuts the opening couple of seconds off the shot of the boats paddling up to shore and then a lot more at the end, with the soldier trying to get his flashlight to work.  And then a few more frames are trimmed off them walking through the field.

1:15:15 Cuts the one soldier helping the other get up off the tracks.

1:16:44 Cuts out some of the article being read aloud about the soldiers' bungled operation being misreported, and some of the dialogue that follows (for example, "well, hairdresser's assistant" and "carried out one of the most daring exploits in military history).

1:17:13 Another DVD-only title card: "Ford Sidi Bishir HQ Egypt."

1:24:00 Cuts two seconds or so from the shot of the battleship.

1:25:45 Several of the orders being given after the commander has broken his leg have been cut.

1.27:00 The "Crete" title card is missing from the blu.

1:30:00 The DVD's closing credits play at double time.

Surprisingly, after all those edit in the first film, there are none in the second, despite the fact that the second is the longer of the two.  The closing credits even play at the same speed.  The only difference is that the DVD is missing another label: "Croatia" at the 1:05:21 mark.  All told, most of the cuts are minor, and you can tell someone was trying to cut for time while doing as little damage as possible.  But a few of the bigger cuts are detractions, sometimes cutting the humor or emotion out of a scene, even if it leaves all the necessary story points intact.  As for the on-screen titles, I have to say, after living with the BD version for years now, and watching it with family, we had no trouble following the story without them.  The ideal version would be the fuller BD cut with these labels intact, sure, but since we have to choose, this international cut is hands down the way to go.  Especially since the BD has other advantages.

US Acorn DVD top; FR Fusion BD bottom.

I wanted to get at least one post into this Import Week that wasn't just comparing the same master appearing on a standard and high definition disc, and here we go.  The DVD is 1.81:1, while the BD is 1.83:1, but you can see the framing has been shifted a little bit more than that.  For example, in the first set of shots, the DVD has a little more on the right side of the picture, and the BD has a bit more on the left.  It's hard to say which looks better, is more technically correct, but it is the first of several distinctions.  The color-timing is similar on both releases, but the DVD has that reddish orange hue that tends to plague older DVDs, which the blu-ray cleans up.  They're both anamorphic, but in terms of resolution and general image quality, while the BD is technically in true 1080p (and a proper BD50), it looks like a soft-ass, edge enhanced upconvert.  There's no real gains in that regard, disappointingly.

But there is a substantial benefit in the interlacing.  As you can see in the first set of shots, both discs suffer from it (for an older TV broadcast, you'd have to expect it, unless someone were to go back to the original film elements and conduct a full-blown restoration).  But it's so much worse on the DVD.  It almost looks like Acorn acquired an interlaced master and then introduced worse interlacing when converting it to NTSC.  Or that's just a very extreme example of the benefits of HD on interlacing.  Either way, it looks decidedly better on the blu.  It's like those Llamentol / Mapetac blu-rays from Spain I covered before: they look like DVD transfers.  But superior DVD transfers compared to the original DVDs, so still a reasonable upgrade, just not terribly impressive looking.

Both discs just feature the original lossy Dolby stereo audio track.  The French blu also includes a stereo French dub, and the US DVD has one thing going for it: optional English subtitles.  The French disc doesn't have any subtitles at all, so at least you don't have to worry about any forced foreign ones.   neither release has any kind of special feature at all, not even a bonus trailer.

Sword of Honour is brilliant, and you should definitely see it if you haven't already.  And the French blu is the way to go, especially since I really don't hold out any hope for a future upgrade for this title, sadly.  There's a sort of adult, high-brow market that contemporary home video seems afraid to touch anymore.  If it's some "pure cinema" Ozu, sure, Criterion and them will swoop it up.  But who's going to tackle legends like Elizabeth R and I, Claudius?  Come on, you cowards!  If Terror Vision can put out Nail Gun Massacre in 4k, somebody can give us The Six Wives of Henry VIII on BD.