Sharpe's Challenge (2006) on Netflix
TV-1420062h 18mActionAdventureHistory
Two years after Waterloo, Wellington sends Sharpe to India to find a missing agent, his old comrade Patrick Harper. When a general's daughter is seized, Sharpe must get inside a rebel stronghold.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.4/102,833 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Plot summary
In 1803 in India, Sergeant Sharpe survives the massacre of an East India Company outpost by playing dead. Fourteen years later, his wife Lucille dead of fever, he farms in France until the Duke of Wellington asks him to find a missing agent in India. Sharpe refuses at first, then learns the agent is his old comrade Patrick Harper and agrees. He meets Celia Burroughs, the daughter of General Burroughs, before marauders attack him and Patrick Harper pulls him out of the fight. Celia is seized and held in the stronghold of Khande Rao, the young nominal head of the revolt, who is guided by the regent Madhuvanthi. Sharpe reaches General Burroughs's camp, where the sick general has handed command to Sir Henry Simmerson, who will not act without orders from Agra.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sharpe's Challenge (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay's Sergeant Shadrach Bickerstaff comes from Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill in the novels. An early scene where Sharpe provokes Bickerstaff to fight him mimics one in Sharpe's Tiger where Hakeswill goads Sharpe into striking him, causing a punishment of 2,000 lashes.
- The film's use of "jettis" (Indian strongmen) is borrowed from the novels, where they carry out acts of violence on the sultan's command, such as executing prisoners by pounding nails into their heads using only their bare hands.
- In the novels, Lucille does not die of fever; she appears in Sharpe's Devil, set in 1820, and in the second book of the Starbuck Chronicles her son Patrick Lassan says she is still alive as of 1861.
- Simmerson is first shown ordering a sepoy to be flogged. The East India Company's armies did not use flogging, but King's soldiers did. The flogging recalls his first meeting with Sharpe in Sharpe's Eagle.
