This is Hollywood History at its best. It has nothing to do with the real Crimean War, the Battle of Balaclava, or the Charge of the Light Brigade. It has everything to do with Errol Flynn, Olivia deHavilland, Michael Curtiz, and Max Steiner. Basically, this is a quintessential Warner Bros. adventure film of 1936, one of the best of the breed.
The story starts in Southern California -- or rather, Northern India -- on the outskirts of the British Empire. This setting had been picked up and dusted off after 1935's "Lives of a Bengal Lancer", and would be recreated for "Gunga Din" a few years later, with the same locations and similar plots. Flynn leads a company of British lancers in skirmishes with the local rajah, the villainous Surat Khan -- you can tell he's the villain because of his evil goatee -- and a betrayal and a massacre leads to a mission of vengeance, which reaches its climax in Tennyson's Valley of Death in the Crimea.
Opposite Flynn is, naturally, Olivia deHavilland, without whom Flynn would be lost. Patric Knowles, who played Will Scarlett in Flynn's "Adventures of Robin Hood", is Flynn's brother; David Niven is his sidekick; and Henry Stephenson, Donald Crisp, and Nigel Bruce are the top brass. Director Michael Curtiz brings out another energetic performance from Flynn, although his character here lacks the depths of the heroes of "Captain Blood" or "The Dawn Patrol". Max Steiner's score complements the action perfectly.
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is quite an epic production, and notorious for the number of horses killed in the battle scenes. That knowledge puts a bit of a damper on the excitement, but it also led to the safety restrictions in place today, banning trip-wires and ensuring the well-being of animals in movies; so, ultimately a good thing. No such measures were ever taken to protect history from the ravages of Hollywood screenwriters: Surat Khan and the country of Suristan never existed, nor did Flynn's 27th Lancers, and although there was indeed a charge at Balaklava, it didn't happen for the reasons depicted in this film. But Flynn and Curtiz didn't care, and neither should the audience.
