Please don't spend money on this.

Brilliant and touching

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Lieutenant Hornblower is a fun, fast-paced adventure novel -- not that you could tell that from watching this turgid, dreary TV adaptation that crawls along at a snail's pace.In addition to being boring, this adaptation misses the whole point of C.S. Forester's original story. In the book, Hornblower seizes the opportunity to fill a void in leadership when his captain is incapacitated, and the ship's first officer proves to be an incompetent replacement. By devising a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, Hornblower salvages his ship's mission, saves the day, and proves that he deserves the command of his own vessel.This stupid version of the story totally ignores all that. For one thing, Hornblower is depicted here as nothing more than a brave, pleasant young man, with little resemblance to the neurotic genius from the books. (He's Sherlock Holmes at sea, not a swashbuckler!) Also, the emphasis is shifted from Hornblower proving himself, to a lot of clumsy melodrama about the mentally ill captain and the mutinous act of removing him from command. Cue 700 scenes of David Warner overacting as the wacky Captain Sawyer, endlessly terrorizing his crew and, by extension, the bored viewer who is tired of watching his shenanigans.There are other things I could complain about - the direction is flat, the dialogue is unrealistic (Royal Navy officers wouldn't be so openly critical of their captain), everything looks too clean, the music is annoying, Mr. Bush has too small a role, etc. It beats me how fans of the novels generally regard this series as a good adaptation; I think it lacks the psychological depth of the books and just plain stinks. My advice is, leave this corny relic of the early 2000s un-viewed and read the book instead.

I loved this movie though I never read the books. The movie was on A&E four years ago. Hornblower's now a third lieutenant on a British two-decker under the command of Captain Sawyer. Sawyer goes a tad loco en la cabeza and punishes Hornblower by having him stand watch all night without sleep. Hornblower does it and he joins a conspiracy to remove Sawyer from command. Somebody pushes Sawyer into the hold of the ship and he's in bed for a long time. The ship's surgeon says he should be relieved of command. Hornblower's eventually court-martialled for mutiny but the charges are dismissed by Sir Edward Pellew, a real life Royal Navy officer, who regularly appeared in C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. Hornblower, like Jack Aubrey, was based on the real-life British officer Sir Thomas Cochrane.

This may well be an excellent production, but I would like to ask the Americans amongst you not to credit an American Network with its production but rather the UK casts crews and channels responsible for making it rather than the US network which seams to incessantly repackage mid quality UK productions

I have been following these since A&E first started making them. I have always found them to be reasonably historically and nautically accurate. However, I must say that I found the pacing a bit slow on this one. Perhaps because it is Part one of two? Ioan Gruffudd is great as always. Robert Lindsay is always wonderful. And the chemistry these two actors have achieved in this series is truly wonderful. Very much like that between a father and son. David Warner is brilliant as the slightly crazed Capt. James Sawyer.See it if you like a good sea drama!