The Charge of the Light Brigade

The film is about the folly of war, and the poor state of the British Army and its leadership during the Crimean War (1853–56). Britain had not fought in a European theatre since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and the army had become sclerotic and bound by bureaucracy. Tactical and logistical methodology had not advanced in forty years, and the whole ethos of the army was bound in outmoded social values.