AnhartLinkin
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Phillipa
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
thefatlebowski
Excellent movie with characters that really draw the viewer into the plot. Richard Attenborough is fantastic as the initially irritating sergeant major who's life is ruled by army discipline and procedure. The other British officers, trapped in the sergeant majors mess are played by a troupe of familiar British faces and the brilliant Jack Hawkins as the camp Major. I can't think of anything else to write but I have to write a minimum of ten lines so please do not feel you need to read any further. One of the best movies I have seen since Dark City, well scripted and well directed although the acting in the Guns at Batasi was superb.
Robert J. Maxwell
I never believed that I would ever see Richard Attenborough in a movie in which he seemed to be overacting. I mean "Attenborough" and "overacting" don't belong in the same sentence. Yet here he is, as the Sergeant Major left in charge of half a dozen non-commissioned officers at a British Army post in Africa, the highest rank an enlisted man can achieve, and he enacts a blustering stereotype, his mess hall accent full of roller coaster contours.Actually I didn't mind it too much. Make up has aged him, given him and intense, almost crazed look, and the director, John Guillerman, seems to have given Attenborough his own leash, and Sir Richard takes off with it. He's a bundle of fiercely constrained potential energy. He never walks. He strides. He snaps out orders to African and British soldiers alike. He insists on proper decorum. He will not recognize an African colonel who has just taken over the country and is threatening to destroy the British post with 40 millimeter cannons -- until the infuriated colonel removes his cap in the mess hall. First things first.It's mostly a filmed play that takes place in the Sergeants' Mess, and it looks it. There are a few outdoor scenes but they're brief, and mostly filmed at night.The performers all look properly sweaty. They're competent too, though none stand out except Attenborough and a few scenes with the ever-reliable Jack Hawkins, who breezes through his part in a state of quizzical tranquility. The women -- Flora Robeson and the teen-aged Mia Farrow, are mostly along for the ride. Farrow looks plumper, more succulent, than we're used to seeing her.The story is fairly comic at first, concentrating on the men's resigned acceptance of Attenborough's by-the-book military character. When he spins a tale at the bar, the other men can mouth the story silently word for word.He performs an heroic deed at the end, but unknowingly he does it after the conflict is resolved. At the request of the new African president, Attenborough is sent back to England. He's not reprimanded or court martialed but it's a definite slap in the face, considering what he accomplished. Later, alone in the mess, he flings a glass of whiskey at the portrait of Queen Victoria, then hurriedly tries to cover up signs of the deed. The significance of the act may have escaped me. I'd have to guess that he, who has lauded the British Army from the beginning, feels that it has turned on him, and that Victoria represents the Army. Instead of a decoration, he's gotten a boot in the pants. If that isn't why he hurls the glass at the picture, I don't know what it is.It's not a bad film and I realize Richard Attenborough has received a cornucopia of kudos for his performance, but it's still a stereotype, a kind of Colonel Blimp. This was shot in 1963 when the British Empire was in the process of contracting and it occurs to me that it might seem dated now, except that as this is being written, the United States is having an almost identical problem in Iraq.
Piafredux
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.
ubercommando
It's the early 60's, Africa is being decolonised and a supposedly peaceful transition from colony to independent nation goes awry. All that stands between order and "enemies of the new state" being butchered is Dickie Attenborough's RSM and his Sergeant's mess. He has to defend his barracks, put up with a naive left wing politician, a young girl who's taken a fancy to a conscript private who wants his last day in the army to go without a hitch, a wounded African officer who is greatly respected by the RSM, but is an enemy of the new army he's supposed to be in charge of and a largely absent British officer corps. But this won't get Dickie down; the worse things get, the more determined and resolved he gets. Some of his dialogue is fantastic and his calm (and not so calm) put downs of those who threaten him or complain to him are brilliant. Like Anthony Hopkins in "Remains of the Day", his is a lifetime of service and duty; but one that kicks serious ass.It's one of Attenborough's finest performances: Certainly up there with Brighton Rock.
