Review – Zulu Dawn

The Battle of Isandlwana was sort of the South African version of Custer’s Last Stand. Thus it was tricky business bringing it to the screen in 1979. On the one hand, the days of Tyrone Power or John Wayne gallantly doing his best against the “heathen savages” had expired a decade or two earlier. But apparently we hadn’t made it quite all the way to equal time and fair portrayal of indigenous peoples. This picture does a reasonably good job of capturing the epic scope and stupidity of the battle, providing a good history lesson for those of us who knew the war only through movies about Roarke’s Drift. Mildly amusing