Myth and reality

Rating: 6/10 (26 August 2012)

Time hasn't been kind to Zulu. I saw it when it first came out. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time and I enjoyed it. It had a certain Boy's Own appeal and (as I thought at the time) some decent action sequences. It was, and is, in many ways a British Alamo. Almost half a century on, the faults are manifest and glaring. I watched it recently on bluray on a 106" screen. Not quite as it was meant to be seen but close. Off topic, the bluray PQ is as bad as most knowledgeable critics have said. DNR and edge enhancement are glaring to the point of distraction. I haven't seen anything that bad since the bluray of The Italian Job, coincidentally another Michael Caine film. On to the film itself. The script is adequate. It restricts itself to a very limited perspective and that's a choice. I don't know but I hope that it's historically accurate because that's the only justification for such a narrow POV. The cinematography is flat. It takes talent to make Africa look boring, to miss the contrasts between the land and its natives and invaders, the sweeping views and the claustrophobia of the mission. I wondered what Vilmos Zsigmond might have done with it. The acting varies from good enough, Stanley Baker and Nigel Green, to hopeless mugging by the rest, led from the front by Jack Hawkins. Michael Caine is miscast as a British officer. The direction is borderline school play, with some shockingly badly realised scenes. Watch Stanley Baker et al stand around impotently as Hawkins persuades forty native soldiers to desert. The fight scenes are worse. I lost track of the number of spear or bayonet impalings where you could see that the blade was beyond the target body. Like The Alamo, this seems to have been a labour of love, with Stanley Baker standing in for John Wayne. I suspect that the budget was less than The Alamo's $12m but that doesn't explain the amateurish feel of the enterprise. It also doesn't explain the film's standing today. For all its political agenda, Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Brigade is a far, far better film but you wouldn't know it from current reviews. 6 out of 10 for old times' sake.