Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

oscar-35 *Spoiler/plot- Guns of Butasi, 1964. A colonial, African country of the British Commonwealth is going through political strife. The central government changes and leaves the British outpost cut-off, vulnerable, and holding out trying to protect it's residents. A 27 year veteran regimental Sargent-major does his best to ride out the political coupe.*Special Stars- Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, Mia Farrow.*Theme- There always be an England and British empire.*Trivia/location/goofs- British. B & W. First on camera role for Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow replaced Britt Ekland at the last minute. The personal weapon used by the British is the Sterling sub machine gun which replaced the Sten in the British Army in 1953. This weapon is held with the left hand on the barrel and never the magazine or housing. Holding the magazine is a throwback to its predecessor, the Sten. The experienced senior members of the Mess are holding it incorrectly whilst the most inexperienced among them (Private Wilkes) holds it correctly and naturally.*Emotion- Well worth you time and effort to see this film. Highly well acted with two of the best English actors of their times; Robson and Attenborough. Extremely good dialog and dramatic situations. Extremely good pacing and memorable dialog from central character: the Regimental Sargent-major.*Based On- The global news about the emerging African nations of the era.

bkoganbing In 1957 with the independence of the Gold Coast renamed Ghana as a new nation, the various colonial powers were getting shed of their colonies as World War II left them unable to hold on. If you looked at a map of the world the year before you would see in Africa the various colonial entities depicted in the same color as the power holding on. By the end of the Sixties you can see Africa as color coded without reference to a mother country.This phenomenon started for the British when they left India to her own devices in 1947. It started with Ghana in 1957 and Guns At Batasi starts as a scene being repeated over and over in Africa, British regular army forces packing up and turning their military installations over to the new African armies of whatever country they were in. But there's a bad political situation brewing here. The Africans that the British have turned the country over to are now being threatened themselves by a military coup. As RSM Richard Attenborough and his mates are just enjoying some last hours at their Sergeant's Mess, wounded Captain Earl Cameron seeks refuge. His lieutenant Errol John is part of the new government and he wants Cameron as a war prisoner.There's a bit of racist attitude in Attenborough and his peers, but they have been in Africa for years and know the temper of the people. A great deal more so than Lady MP Flora Robson who knew Errol John as a student in London and feels she can reason with him. She gets disabused of that notion rather fast.It's a delicate political situation that Attenborough doesn't need reminding of. Still he shows some good initiative in his response.Guns At Batasi is a snapshot in time of the changing face of Africa. And even more interesting is the fact that the film was shot in the United Kingdom without setting foot in Africa. The producers could get away with it because most of the film takes place in and around the sergeant's mess. And Africa was replete with Batasi like incidents to make location shooting not a good idea.Although he's backed by a superb cast which also includes Jack Hawkins as the local army commander and Cecil Parker as the former colonial administrator of the area, Guns At Batasi is the film of Richard Attenborough. He really does become the spit and polish, all army RSM. It is said that the high non-commissioned officers really run the army in an country and with people like Attenborough you can believe it.Errol John is wonderful in his role as well. A few years earlier this was a part earmarked for Sidney Poitier, but now many black players were getting their due. John should have had a great career.Guns At Batasi is a great film about the declining days of the British colonial empire. This was when the sun was finally setting.

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.