Movie Review: Zulu (Blu-ray, Twilight Time)

Reviewed by: Mike Heenan

Years ago, at the height of my 35mm collecting I got an unused dye transfer Technicolor trailer for Zulu.  Never having seen it before but knowing Michael Caine was in the film, I was excited to see it projected and when I finally did, I was hooked.  The colors simply just popped off the screen.  The film content itself looked very interesting as I’m a big fan of older epic films, but I never managed to see it until receiving Twilight Time’s amazing Blu-Ray release.

The film is a true life account of a regiment of British troops led by Stanley Baker and Michael Caine who are stationed in Africa at a missionary depot.  They are warned by traveling missionaries that a large group of Zulu warriors, having achieved mighty success earlier on against another regiment, are headed their way.  The regiment fortifies the mission and Stanley Baker pleads with no luck to traveling Boer horsemen to stay and fight with them.  In the vast distance appears 4,000 Zulu warriors, ready to battle against the 150-something troops.  The warriors initially attack with rifles.  The British are surprised at this and guess the warriors must have claimed the weapons from the earlier defeated regiment. The battle rages on in droves and the British manage to maintain their hold on the depot.

Movie Review: Saving General Yang (2013, Pegasus Motion Pictures/Well Go USA)

...considering the human virtues examined and upheld, there's more than great appeal and compelling intrigue, when partaking of Chinese films, which depict the best...and sometimes, the worst of man's nature. His strengths... weaknesses... ideologies... flaws... passions... sacrifices. Time and time again, Asian cinema has wrought keen focus on their historical figures and heroes...Wong Fei Hung...Hung Hei Kwoon...Fong Sai Yuk...finding them much more relatable and inspirational than invented fictional characters. And in a nutshell, that's the major juxstapositioned key to these films' invariable appeal; if one finds one's self unable to relate to these characters, or feel the sense of how real these persons actually were, then the overall substance in the events portrayed becomes minimal...even non-existent. Regrettably, such is the case with the latest dramatization of one of China's most famous historical war tales, and the fraternal band of warriors, associated with the legendary tale...told a number of times, in the past, but here, rendered with all the grandiose visual spectacle of a major war epic...but with little substance...generic, fleeting and dramatically unembraceable...