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# Thousands of Zulu Warriors. About 150 British Soldiers. And One Hell of a Movie.
- URL: https://www.bensmovieguide.com/thousands-of-zulu-warriors-about-150-british-soldiers-and-one-hell-of-a-movie/
- Published: 2026-09-25T16:19:57.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-27T04:40:47.000Z
- Description: Far from Normandy and the usual World War II battlefields, *Zulu* is still one of the most gripping war movies I’ve seen. And, yes, it was made in 1964.
- Author: Ben
- Tags: #movie, #editorial, Movie: Zulu (1964), war, drama, 1960s, Rating: Not Rated, #Runtime: 138, #Verdict: Watch, #Eybrow: No Tanks. No Normandy., #Watch: Major Platforms, #featured

There’s a natural instinct to assume that movies made before you were born probably aren’t going to be very good. And to be fair, sometimes that instinct is right. I’m not sitting around watching movies from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s every night. A lot of them feel old in ways that are hard to ignore.

[*Zulu*](https://www.bensmovieguide.com/zulu-1964/) is one of the exceptions.

 The first few minutes may not convince you of that. There’s a missionary, there’s a lot of setup, and the movie takes its time getting where it’s going. It is very clearly a film made in 1964.

Be patient.

What the movie really needs is the arrival of its two central officers. One is an engineer (Stanley Baker), a bridge builder. The other is a career infantry officer (Michael Caine), polished and self-assured, and he carries himself like a man who has spent his life expecting people to follow orders without much discussion.

The contrast between them is what makes the setup so good. 

The soldier looks like the obvious man to lead the coming battle. He knows military life, he knows how troops operate, and he carries himself like exactly the sort of officer you would expect to take command when several thousand Zulu warriors are moving toward a position defended by only a fraction of that number.

But this is the British Army, and that isn’t how it works.

The engineer is senior, so the engineer is in command. You might think that with roughly 4,000 warriors coming and about 150 men to stop them, basic survival instincts would override technicalities and the professional soldier would take over.

 Not a chance.

Rank is rank, and the soldier knows it. He doesn’t have to be happy about it, and he isn’t. He’s a snot, but he’s British, so he’s a proper snot. That restrained irritation gives the relationship more personality than a big shouting match ever would. The engineer is calmer, more practical and less interested in proving himself, which only makes the contrast better.

Then the Zulus arrive, and the movie changes completely.

That’s the point where you stop thinking about when the film was made. The scale of the attack, the formations, the discipline on both sides and the sheer number of men moving across the landscape give the battle an immediacy that still works more than 60 years later. 

There are no tanks, no bombers, no machine guns and none of the imagery we normally associate with World War II movies. It’s rifles, bayonets, barricades and a defensive position that suddenly looks impossibly small.

 What makes Zulu so effective is that it doesn’t need modern effects or frantic editing to manufacture tension. 

The situation does the work. 

You know how badly outnumbered they are, you understand how little room they have for mistakes, and the movie gives the battle enough time to develop so that every change in position and every decision actually matters.

By the time it’s fully underway, you’re not watching an old movie anymore.

 You’re just watching one of the best war movies ever made.

**One practical note**: *Zulu* is often available free on The Roku Channel, and you don’t need Roku hardware to watch it—the Roku Channel app is also available on Amazon Fire TV.

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