Best Action Movie I've Ever Seen

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2002)

Simply thrilling.
What a movie! This story of a battle is breath-taking. The sheer action, the music generate so much suspense. The humanity of the characters is so brought home (their fear and bravery, their wonder, their homesickness, their pride, their laziness, their social snobbery).
As wonderful as anyone would find this movie, I do have some criticisms: a) the cleric's role - one assumes he's introduced to put additional pressure on the soldiers attempting to do their duty - yet no one seems to pay attention, so what was the point of his scenes? I can understand Jack Hawkins' irritation at the way the character is portrayed - a scared drunken weak buffoon instead of a serious pacifist, b) I think Caine overplays the aristocratic officer - it needn't mean utterly effeminate, c) the soldiers' frequent crediting of the Zulus as if they were simply a contending rugby team is not very believable - it's hard to imagine a war in which one doesn't really hate and despise the enemy for killing one's friends, and d) the character of Hook seemed a bit of a clicheed cockney.
That aside, wow! This is what John Wayne's The Alamo should have been like - instead much was frittered away in subplots.
The courage of the moviemaker to show one battle - without silly subplots about the characters' interaction, a fictitious romantic story, or long expository scenes about the genesis of the Zulu Wars - is remarkable. I've seen this perhaps a half dozen times. Everyone I know who has seen it, tells his friends.