Stephen Dade captures the luscious colorful landscapes and the sense of strange isolation...

Rating: 9/10 (11 September 2001)

'Zulu' opens on January 22nd, 1879 with a pacifist missionary Otto Witt (Jack Hawkins), and his blonde daughter Margareta (Ulla Jacobsson) attending a Zulu mass marriage ceremony...
The impressive dancing and chanting takes on a different tone when the preacher discovers that Zulu forces have massacred hundreds of British troops at Iswandhlwana and are determined to destroy Rorke's Drift, an army outpost, in addition to being Witt's mission station...
The shaken reverend arrives and explains the situation to the British officers, advising an immediate evacuation... To his horror, the officers decide to withstand and defend their ammunition dump with 139 Welch infantrymen, a mixture of committed soldiers and complaining malingerers...
The haughty arrogant Lt. Bromhead (Michael Caine) is in charge, but Lt. John Chard (Stanley Baker) of the Royal Engineers - on assignment to build a bridge  takes command actually by strict seniority...
The situation becomes dramatic by the fact that Chard has had no combat experience and, on a distinguished level, he is obviously not from an aristocratic background... But urgency obliges the two officers to set up the defense of the station, deploy their men tactically, and prepare for the attack...
Then thousands of Zulus, armed with short spears and captured rifles, arrive on the grassy hilltops... Their unseen advance is announced by a threatening chanting...
And then they come into sight...
Long lines of black figures descending the green slopes of the hills, promising with the terrible clash of their shields and spears that soon they are going launch a fearless attack...
Their techniques of tribal warfare fashioned an efficient and terrifying fighting force... They begin to test the British firing power with the life of their warriors...
The British rifles cut them down and they retreat... But they come again-and again and again-each time getting closer to the station, cutting down the distance...
Every withdraw is followed by a deathly silence... It seems obviously that any of them will survive... In every disciplined attack they are less in number and ammunition...
After a long night, and at the rise of the sun, the fearful noise suddenly alerts the redcoats to another charge...
Most of the men in the infirmary were too sick or injured to help... Few are malingerers, like Private Hook (James Booth), who decides much later to take his bayonet and fights heroically in hand-to-hand combat with dozen of black warriors inside the burning building...
Outside, the exhausted soldiers prepare for what must be the last charge, but instead they hear a massed yell from the Zulusa salute of acknowledgment to the braves as they withdraw from the scene...
The battle at Rorke's Drift was a decisive one in the British campaign to pacify South Africa for European settlers who came to force their culture upon the angry natives... As a page in British history it has the distinction of being the battle which produced the Victoria Crosses in few hours - to eleven defenders for their extreme courage - an all-time record for one military engagement...
Stanley Baker is solid as the engineer who is forced to become a combat commanding officer; Michael Caine splendid (in his first major role) as the pompous aristocrat; James Booth good enough as the guy who can easily find a reason to check himself into the hospital; Patrick Magee excellent as the calm surgeon; and Nigel Green, a sergeant of the old order, sternly watchful and understanding of his men but compassionate, as in the last move when he lines the tired and dispirited survivors up for a head count... He looks at them and quietly advises: 'Keep your voices down!'
The film is a superb account of that bloody engagement, and the fighting is shown in realistic detail... It salutes the heroism of the Zulus and the extreme courage of the redcoats...
Cy Endfield's direction gives emphasis to the physical exhaustion of nonstop killing, and the effect it has on men, making some tremble with great fear... More significantly, he avoids any explanation about the racial nature of the conflict, keeping out politics and history...
With John Barry's menacing musical score, "Zulu" was filmed in Natal, South Africa and Stephen Dade captured the luscious colorful landscapes and the sense of strange isolation... But the most arresting moment in the film is when Enfield's camera pans over a field carpeted with black corpses, gathered side by side or one on top of the other...