Critics reviews

As recounted by the Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell, Mr. Scorsese (ubiquitous this week) recalled seeing "Zulu" at the RKO Palace in Manhattan with an enthusiastic, mainly black audience. "If there's a word to describe the movie, it's ‘relentless,' " he declared. The same could be said of John Barry's effectively implacable African-inspired score, which continues to build in tension even during the choreographed spear-to-bayonet combat.

Endfield utilizes all of his technical facility in filling the 70mm frames, using dollies down the lines of interchangeable soldiers. The script aims to collapse class difference in the arc of the relationship between Stanley Baker and posh English lieutenant Michael Caine, who was here cast in his first major role. Baker recommended him to Endfield after seeing him in the play Next Time I'll Sing to You, then all the rage on the West End.

[Zulu] now strikes me as one of the very greatest of all war films (a genre that I'm not generally partial to), even when it presents combat as potentially noble, succeeding equally in intimate details and in spectacular overviews...

Endfield's primary focus is conflict physics. His camera frequently panning left, right, and diagonally in detached, Ernie Gehr-esque glides, Zulureinvents the Black Narcissus paradox—that a company of homesick occupiers can experience rank claustrophobia in a place that can hardly be said to have a shortage of elbow room.