Review – Khartoum

For a movie that cost a ton to make, this sure is weird. Hero Charlton Heston and villain Laurence Olivier square off in an epic battle of bad accents, with the former making mercenary general Charles Gordon sound like a refugee from a bad sketch comedy routine mocking the English for sounding gay while the latter gives fundamentalist rebel The Mahdi all the gravitas of a clerk from the Kwik-E-Mart on The Simpsons. Ultimately Olivier gets the edge, because he buttresses his stereotypical performance with horrible “brown face” makeup. I was also surprised that the epic battle of Khartoum finally plays out only in the last ten minutes or so of the picture, dragging the audience through nearly two hours of prelude (complete with intermission). Mildly amusing