The Master of Ballantrae (1953)
Directed by William Keighley

Film Review

Errol Flynn was well past his prime when he made this, one of his last swashbucklers, but he still manages to enliven what could otherwise have been a pretty characterless adventure romp.  Very little of Robert Louis Stevenson's original novel The Master of Ballantrae (a masterful tale of split identity and hatred) makes it onto the screen and the film suffers particularly from an acute lack of character detail.  A typically gutsy performance from Flynn, here bizarrely (but brilliantly) partnered with Roger Livesey, and some attractive colour photography from Jack Cardiff make up for this, although the main selling point has to be the succession of superbly well-choreographed fight sequences.  Admittedly it is somewhat less impressive than Flynn's previous classic swashbucklers - Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940) - but if you can live with the massive plot compression (which all but erodes the protagonists' motivations) and some seriously dodgy back projection, The Master of Ballantrae holds up surprisingly well, the perfect antidote for a rainy day.

Film Synopsis

Scotland, 1745.  Those loyal to the Stuarts are preparing a rebellion against the English crown, determined to overthrow the Hanoverian King George II and replace him with the Stuart descendent, Bonnie Prince Charlie.  The two heirs to the Durrisdeer estate, Jamie Durie and his brother Henry, agree that one of them will join the rebellion whilst the other sides with the English redcoats.  They make the choice by tossing a coin, with the result that Jamie ends up fighting for the rebel cause at the Battle of Culloden Field.  Once the rebels have been defeated by the English armies, Jamie takes flight and meets up with an Irish mercenary, Colonel Francis Burke.  The two men agree to form an alliance, but when he shows himself on his estate Jamie is betrayed, apparently by his brother.   Having evaded capture, Jamie and Burke flee to the continent and agree to capture a pirate ship and its treasure so that they can return to Scotland.  Unfortunately, the ship belongs to Captain Arnaud, a formidable swordsman and one of the most notorious of pirates...