What it meant to be Christian soldiers ...

Rating: 9/10 (25 October 2000)

.. which, nominally, they were. At least, they wore red coats and could quote the psalms. There were about 100 of them, plus a contingent of sick and lame in the infirmary at the supply camp at Rourke's Drift, Natal, South Africa, in 1879 when the Zulus rose, 4,000 strong, to wipe out the real army of 1,000 that protected them. They themselves were, on paper, anything but warriors. Cooks, supply masters, singers in the choir, malingerers, only a few of them stiff-upper-lipped soldiers, they were a ragtag bunch. Their foppish, racist commander, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (Michael Caine, making his first screen appearance) is there only because he's the son of an officer who was the son of an one who died at Waterloo. Another officer just happens to be on the scene, Lieutenant John Chard (Stanley Baker), but he's an engineer sent to extend the fruits of Her Majesty's largesse by building a bridge. When the whole Zulu nation converges on their skimpy redoubt, can these mostly green noncombatants hope to survive?
By the time of the first Zulu onslaught, the patrician Bromhead has shown just enough intelligence to let the smarter Chard deploy the troops and organize the resistance. Meanwhile, the plebeian Chard has had to dig deep within himself to summon courage to match the cool Bromhead's native fortitude. Strange bedfellows, they make a good team. The men respond to them. But, despite their successfully repulsing the Zulus in early stages of the battle, how can they ever last, given their enemy's overwhelming numbers?
Their cause is not bolstered by the presence of the Swedish missionary, Reverend Otto Witt (Jack Hawkins), and his prim daughter Margareta (Ulla Jacobsson). Neither see war as consistent with God's will. He, positively unnerved by it, takes to the bottle when he isn't exhorting soldiers to lay down their arms. Chard eventually has to expel them from the camp. The Zulus display their own nobility when they decline to massacre them.
The battle at Rourke's Drift rages on. Whatever the outcome, it is clear from the start that this taut, exciting, well-made movie from 1964 celebrates honor, bravery, and male brotherhood above all else ... including God.