Sharpe's Eagle (1993) on Netflix
TV-1419931h 40mActionAdventureHistory
Spain, 1809: Lieutenant Richard Sharpe joins Sir Henry Simmerson's South Essex Regiment, sent to destroy a bridge. Simmerson's blunder loses the colors. Sharpe must take a French eagle.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.8/103,554 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley prepares to invade French-controlled Spain. He sends Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and his chosen riflemen along with Sir Henry Simmerson's newly arrived South Essex Regiment, whose mission is to blow up a bridge that French troop movements depend on. Simmerson, his nephew Gibbons and Lieutenant Berry scorn Sharpe for his low birth, while Major Lennox and Captain Leroy value his experience. Seeing the regiment mishandled, Sharpe trains it in shooting. When a hidden French cavalry unit overruns a detachment at the bridge, the King's colors are lost; Wellesley reprimands Simmerson and gives Sharpe command of the Light Company, promoting him to captain instead of Gibbons while warning that the rank may not last.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sharpe's Eagle (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The TV adaptation of Sharpe's Eagle cut the number of riflemen Sharpe brings to the South Essex from thirty in Bernard Cornwell's novel down to just the Chosen Men and Sergeant Harper, to keep production costs down.
- The character Teresa had not yet appeared when Sharpe's Eagle was written, debuting in the later novel Sharpe's Gold; the film puts her into many events of the plot and drops Sharpe's relationship with Josefina as a result.
- The film gives Captain Thomas Leroy a subplot that he made his fortune as a slave-trader, a background the Leroy of the novel does not have.
- In the novel the bridge at Valdelacasa is an old Roman stone bridge, but the film shows a wooden one. The battle there is much smaller, with only a few dozen men, and Sharpe's capture of the French cannon was written out.
SPOILER
In the novel Gibbons is killed by Harper at Talavera when he attacks Sharpe, but in the film he flees with Simmerson and survives; Berry's film death merges the novel's deaths of Gibbons and Berry, where Sharpe lures Berry off under cover of a French attack and stabs him through the throat.
