Shangani Patrol (1970) User Reviews

Enjoyable film if you accept the historical limitations.

[uzulu24 · 7/10 · 13 July 2006]

I managed to get a DVD of this film from an outfit called 'Memories of Rhodesia' (I think they are on the web), having searched for some time. I thoroughly enjoyed it - although the print quality isn't great - and the film is pretty much what I expected. Given the time (1970) and place it was made (Rhodesia) I didn't expect a revisionist view of the history, and sure enough I didn't get it. It runs pretty much like a standard Western with the whites as good guys and the Matabele as 'Indians' - which is essentially a historical view (in both cases) weighted towards the settler ideology. It's the Matabele who, in fact, are fighting for their own land. These days Cecil Rhodes and his side-kick Dr Jameson - who engineered the war - are regarded pretty critically by historians, but inevitably there is no trace of that here. Rhodes doesn't appear, and Jameson is portrayed as a tough guy standing up to the Matabele. Rather oddly, the film jumps from the clash between settlers which provoked the war and the pursuit of King Lobengula which ended it (the 'Shangani patrol' of the title), missing out a chunk of battles in between. Once you accept these limitations, however, and the film gets underway it is very enjoyable - although a touch slow for modern tastes. It concentrates on Major Wilson and his decision to pursue Lobengula and the retreating Matabele despite the obvious dangers - it is not entirely uncritical of Wilson, which is a good thing. The human drama comes from the predicament of the individuals under his command as they are cut off by the Matabele. The locations are excellent, the general appearance of the participants (historically speaking) is quite good, and the battle-scenes are plentiful and well staged. Given the subject matter it is pretty bloodless (it seems a bit insipid in these post 'Saving Private Ryan' days) but again that is typical of the time it was made. The ending (I hope I'm not giving much away by saying Wilson's men all die; this is, after all, the Rhodesian equivalent of 'Custer's Last Stand') manages to be quite moving despite the curious 'Butch Cassidy' freeze-frame finish - which I assume was chosen to avoid the contentious (at the time) subject of depicting black Africans killing whites. David Millin's style is inevitably rather dated by modern standards - even by 1970 the South African film industry was pretty isolated from the rest of the wold - but his films deserve a wider audience because they delve into little-known aspects of southern African history. This film doesn't quite have the power of 'Zulu' - a similar theme - but has touches that once or twice come close.

They were men...

[zlarthon · 10/10 · 11 November 2003]

Brave men. Difficult mission. We need this film and the others by Millin available in the US... We are critically short of historical films about anything that happened in Southern Africa (unless you count the allegedly historical Shaka Zulu, Zulu, and Zulu Dawn)

Millin was a genius, not often credited here in the US...