Guns at Batasi (1964)

hyped garbage

Excellent but underrated film

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"Said England unto Pharaoh, "I must make a man of you, That will stand upon his feet and play the game; That will maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do," And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant Whatisname"Rudyard Kipling wrote the above over a century ago, but no doubt it was what the author of "Guns at Batasi" had in mind when he created the remarkable character of Regimental Sergeant-Major Lauderdale.Set in the 1960s, at a time when Britain's former African colonies were in the process of achieving independence as members of the British Commonwealth, "Guns at Batasi" is the story of how the members of the sergeant's mess deal with a combination of simultaneous crises. Along with the visit of a British female MP (Dame Flora Robson playing a sort of Labor Party version of Margaret Thatcher), comes the eruption of a coup d'etat staged by the native officers and troops, followed by the arrival of a native officer wounded by the rebels. In charge of dealing with the situation is Regimental Sergeant-Major Lauderdale, the ultimate British Senior N.C.O., played to perfection by the great Richard Attenborough.And deal with it he does! While "Guns at Batasi" is a great story, as in the case of most of the great British films, it is character rather than action that prevails here. In R.S.M. Lauderdale, Richard Attenborough may well have created the finest performance of his illustrious career. If you haven't heard of this great but little-known movie, give it a chance. The story and the characters will grab you!

Lord Attenborough is not my favourite actor nor my favourite director. Most of his movies are,to my view, overlong and over keen on pointing out the blindingly obvious.However,in the early 1960s he produced two outstanding performances,"Seance on a wet afternoon" and this one"Guns at Batasi". The characters couldn't be more different,from a gentle anxious husband of a woman mad with grief to a tough vastly experienced senior N.C.O in the British Army at the time the Empire was becoming the Commonwealth. The film is set in a military outpost in a small African country about to become independent.The British as the outgoing colonial power have no exit strategy,wham,bang,thank you ma'am appears to be their style and they are surprised to find that not all the members of this new nation are singing from the same hymn sheet. "If you can keep you head when all others about you are losing theirs and blaming you...."could be Lauderdale's byword. As a representative of the Old Guard he is a prime target for the left wing Labour M.P. on a "fact - finding" mission,i.e.seeking to confirm her prejudices.Miss Flora Robson has her part down pat as the knee - jerk bomb - banner,fellow - traveller,a type that flourished in the Wilson government. Despite the august presence of Mr Jack Hawkins as the senior officer,it is Lauderdale who holds things together. Attenborough never sounds a wrong note in the whole movie.It is a performance richly deserving of its BAFTA. Mr John Leyton,a pop singer of the time appears in a small role that did not presage a hugely successful career in movies.His love interest,Miss Mia Farrow,hot on the heels of the TV series "Peyton Place" on the other hand,was destined for greater things. Colonialism is of course now a dirty word and Commonwealth a meaningless one clung to by few outside Buckingham Palace and Whitehall. That the British Army is as effective as it is today is the legacy of men like Regimental Sergeant Major Lauderdale who soldiered selflessly to protect whatever the government of the day considered to be the best interests of the country.His was not to reason why.

I enjoyed this film considerably. The production values were nice, the acting good, and it had a good sense of humor I wasn't expecting. The Sergeant Major's character was obviously clichéd, but they rounded him out enough to save him from being a mediocre character. There are some really nice touches in the script, and many of them are humorous. I though that the wounded captain's collapse just as he's giving himself up to his African countrymen is a bit coincidental, but dramatically speaking, he needs to be kept in the mess hall. And for what it's worth, and although I've never been a big fan of hers, Mia Farrow has never looked hotter.

I first saw 'Guns At Batasi' several times in its butchered for television version shown mostly on late-night TV, a pan-&-scan version which also deprived the film of its Cinemascope format. But I just saw the DVD which reproduces the original Cinemascope (and which includes an entertaining commentary track by John Leyton who plays Pte. Wilkes in the film) which let's us see 'Guns At Batasi' to its deserved advantage.It's a splendid character study of a British Army Regimental Sergeant Major set in an absorbing - and rather accurately prophetic - plot of a post-colonial African revolution.After Richard Attenborough, properly dominant as the thoroughly professional, no-nonsense Regimental Sergeant Major, the almost uniformly solid casting gives us nice turns by the four sergeants, Leyton as Pte. Wilkes, Flora Robson as the gullible MP keen to believe her ilk's pie-in-the-sky Marxisant p.c. propaganda, Errol John as the African rebel officer, and the always splendid Jack Hawkins as Lt. Col. Deal (an apt name considering the part his character fulfils in the story). Teenaged Mia Farrow has a small role (her first in cinema, I think) as a events-stranded UN secretary who shares a mutual lust interest with Leyton's Pte. Wilkes (Farrow's scenes were re-shoots owing to the originally-cast Britt Ekland's desertion from the filming to fly to her then-paramour Peter Sellers' side while he was working in the U.S.). The writing is very good and, as I said, prescient in view of the continuing undeserved credibility placed in chiefly venal Third World leaders by Western politicians, media, and p.c. types; Guillermin's direction is sure-handed; and production design and cinematography - some very good B&W work here aided by capable lighting - are a cut or two above workmanlike.Though shot entirely at England's Pinewood Studios on a rather low budget, the strong script and fine acting raise 'Guns At Batasi' to the level of a minor classic well worth appreciating.