Les Canons de Batasi

I remember seeing this film when it first came out and recall it made an impression on me as a young man. Saw it again last night on Fox Classics during war film week in the first week of November and it impresses me even more.

Since the first viewing I have experienced a military career in the air force and as a trainee pilot our WOD (Warrant Officer Disciplinary) could have been RSM Lauderdale to a tee. They just seem to know all about life and know what to do or say in any situation. And they have a wonderful innate knowledge of the big picture as well as the most intimate attention to detail. I am sure that this type of military rank was a vital cog in winning every war that has ever been won.

Loved the script - why, oh why, don't the smash, crash, wallop Hollywood script writers look at these old classics and learn how to put an interactive character piece together which can keep you on the edge of your seat without having cars smash through plate glass windows? Richard Attenborough certainly earned his BAFTA for his performance not only for the way he delivered his lines but his visual representation to every bat of his eyelid and twitch of his moustache.

My only criticism is the fact that being low budget it is quite obvious that it was shot in England especially when you can see English trees and houses in the background in some of the scenes. If only it could have been shot on location like "Zulu" it could have been even greater. But then again the strength of the film is the script and how cleverly it covered the type of dilemma which we still face to-day. Makes me wonder why it has never been done on the stage – or maybe it has.

Perhaps it is because I am a sucker for British military movies.

Or maybe it's because the first time I saw it I did not expect much from it, but Guns at Batasi lept to the top of my all-time favorites list the first time I saw it.

It stays there no matter how many times I see it.

It's hokey, it's overdone and it's certainly low-budget. But it does have a sterling cast of British character actors, and it has several powerful scenes and Attenborough is magnificent as the sergeant-major. A great character study.

Here's a man, who has dedicated his entire adult life to a code, a way of life. It's all he knows, it's all he wants and in this one incident everything he has ever stood for or worked for it tested and threatened.

The sergeant major, despite what you might think of the military is a man of honor and courage. He's the kind of guy you would want on your side no matter what.

If you have not seen this movie. Find it, see it. Give it a chance. I think you will like. A definite thumbs up.

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.

I'd never even heard of Guns at Batasi before but I was amazed to find that it's a superlative film. I was expecting standard British stiff-upper-lip fare that the British did so well in the 1950s and '60s, but what I wasn't expecting is that a film I'd never even heard of rivals and even exceeds top-notch British dramas like Sidney Lumet's 'The Hill'.

The film stands squarely on Richard Attenborough's pitch-perfect performance as a Regimental Sergeant Major - the performance of a lifetime, especially when you consider that Attenborough is the complete opposite of the character he plays in this film - in reality he's soft-spoken and unassuming, yet the character he's playing is not at all those things. To say that this role was a stretch somehow doesn't do the performance justice - Attenborough literally becomes the RSM, and every moment he's on screen is incredible. Some reviewers assume that his performance is over-the-top, but I can assure everyone that British NCOs do act like this - or at least they did in the 1960s - I had the honour of knowing one of them.

Not that Attenborough is doing it all alone - the other performances are perfect too, as is the direction. The fact that the film was made in a studio in England makes you realise what a great job a truly great crew can do for a film - there's no way you'd think this movie wasn't made in Africa.

Altogether a fantastic movie - probably the best new film (new to me anyway) I've seen in the last two years. This blows everything else out of the water.

Oh, and for those worried that it's a war film - definitely not. It's a drama set in a military barracks, but psychological drama is what we have here, and unlike a lot of those kinds of films this one has a heart and a sense of humour. Don't miss this one!

About the only British war film I can think of that was more tension-filled than "Guns at Batasi" is "Zulu"--and that puts it in awfully good company. In addition, Richard Attenborough has a terrific performance as a very rigid and very traditional Sergeant Major.

The film is set in Africa in one of the nations that is still a member of the Commonwealth--though it has achieved the distinction of finally having its own government. However, like so many nascent African nations, it's unstable--and soon after the film begins there is a coup and the government topples. The problem is that a group of British soldiers are stationed there and the new leaders want the Brits to give up their weapons as well as surrender a man to them. But, the tough-as-nails Sergeant Major isn't about to do either of these unless he has a direct order to do so. And, it doesn't matter if there is a know-it-all member of Parliament (Flora Robson) telling him to do this--she is not his superior officer and he is not about to break the chain of command.

As I said, it's a very tense little film. You may not appreciate the Brit-focus (after all, they were a Colonial nation until just before the film took place) nor casting an unnecessary sex interest (why include this--isn't there enough action already--plus who stops to have sex when they are facing what appears to be certain death?!). I could look past these things and just saw it as a darn fine action-adventure film. Worth seeing.