Guns at Batasi


Despite good intentions, Guns at Batasi (1964) never really
gels. Both critical of British Imperialism and elegiac toward career soldiers
and their rigid formalities and traditions, the picture compares unfavorably to
the vastly superior Zulu, released that same year and which covers much
of the same ground. Guns at Batasi, by contrast, is uninvolving and for
various reasons inauthentic, and though Richard Attenborough admirably goes out
on an actorly limb as the film's central character, an old-fashioned,
disciplinarian of a Regimental Sergeant Major, his performance is simply too
broad to be believed.

Set in present-day Africa, in a fictional East African nation, the film takes
place on a British military base used to train indigenous conscripts during the
country's transitional period from British colony to independent nation. Shortly
after Commanding Officer Col. Deal (Jack ...
Read the entire review